Patents by Inventor Mototsugu Abe

Mototsugu Abe has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20120266743
    Abstract: An index calculating unit calculates a tonality index of a signal component of each area of the input signal transformed into a time frequency domain based on intensity of the signal component and a function obtained by approximating the intensity of the signal component. A similarity calculating unit calculates a similarity between a feature quantity in each area of the input signal obtained based on the index and the feature quantity in each area of the reference signal obtained based on the index calculated on the reference signal transformed into the time frequency domain. A music identifying unit identifies music of the input signal based on the similarity. The present technology can be applied to a music search apparatus that identifies music from an input signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 12, 2012
    Publication date: October 25, 2012
    Inventors: Takashi SHIBUYA, Mototsugu ABE
  • Publication number: 20120238908
    Abstract: An information processing apparatus and method provide logic for processing information. In one implementation, an information processing apparatus may include a receiving unit configured to receive an audio signal associated with a motion of a human mandible over a time period. The information processing apparatus may also include a determination unit configured to determine whether the motion of the human mandible corresponds to mastication, based on at least a power of the received audio signal during the time period.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 9, 2012
    Publication date: September 20, 2012
    Inventors: Keiichi Osako, Toshiyuki Sekiya, Mototsugu Abe
  • Patent number: 8254677
    Abstract: An apparatus for detecting a cut change based on a similarity between a first image and a second image, includes a unit for generating one of a luminance histogram and a color histogram of each of the first image and the second image, a unit for generating a spatial correlation image representing a correlation between spatial layouts of the first image and the second image, a unit for calculating a histogram similarity representing a similarity between the histogram of the first image and the histogram of the second image, a unit for calculating a spatial correlation image similarity representing a similarity between the spatial correlation image of the first image and the spatial correlation image of the second image, and a unit for determining whether a border between the first image and the second image is a cut change based on the histogram similarity and the spatial correlation image similarity.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 4, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 28, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Patent number: 8255214
    Abstract: A first signal of two signals to be compared for similarity is divided into small areas and one small area is selected for calculating the correlation with a second signal using a correlative method. Then, the quantity of translation, expansion rate and similarity in an area where the similarity, which is the square of the correlation value, reaches its maximum, are found. Values based on the similarity are integrated at a position represented by the quantity of translation and expansion rate. Similar processing is performed with respect to all the small areas, and at a peak where the maximum integral value of the similarity is obtained, its magnitude is compared with a threshold value to evaluate the similarity. The small area voted for that peak can be extracted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 15, 2002
    Date of Patent: August 28, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Publication number: 20120197420
    Abstract: A signal processing device includes a sound collecting unit configured to collect sound, a covering detecting unit configured to detect a covered state of the sound collecting unit on the basis of a resonance frequency and a magnitude of a component of the resonance frequency in a frequency characteristic of an acoustic signal obtained through sound collection performed by the sound collecting unit, and an apparatus control determining unit configured to determine a type of control to be performed on a target apparatus in accordance with the covered state of the sound collecting unit detected by the covering detecting unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 19, 2012
    Publication date: August 2, 2012
    Inventors: Toshiyuki KUMAKURA, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20120162471
    Abstract: An audio signal processing device includes a first microphone configured to pick up audio and output a first audio signal; a second microphone configured to pick up the audio and output a second audio signal; a first frequency converter configured to convert the first audio signal to a first audio spectrum signal; a second frequency converter configured to convert the second audio signal to a second audio spectrum signal; an operating sound estimating unit configured to estimate, based on the correlation between a sound emitting member that emits an operating sound and the first and second microphones, an operating sound spectrum signal indicating the operating sound, by calculating the first and second audio spectrum signals; and an operating sound reducing unit configured to reduce the estimated operating sound spectrum signal from the first and second audio spectrum signals.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 19, 2011
    Publication date: June 28, 2012
    Inventors: Toshiyuki SEKIYA, Keiichi Osako, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20120157857
    Abstract: A respiratory signal processing apparatus includes a pulse-based component detection unit configured to detect a pulse-based component from a first signal acquired from a living being, and a pulse-based component removal unit configured to remove the detected pulse-based component from a second signal acquired from the living being, the second signal including respiratory sounds.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 8, 2011
    Publication date: June 21, 2012
    Applicant: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Chika Myoga, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Publication number: 20120150054
    Abstract: A respiratory condition analysis apparatus includes a respiratory signal acquisition section configured to acquire a time-series respiratory signal including respiratory sound of a living body, a respiratory segment identification section configured to identify a respiratory segment that is a time segment including the respiratory sound in the respiratory signal, a feature value generation section configured to generate a predetermined feature value of the respiratory signal for the identified respiratory segment, and a respiratory abnormality degree generation section configured to generate a degree of abnormality of the respiratory sound included in the respiratory signal on the basis of the feature value.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 1, 2011
    Publication date: June 14, 2012
    Applicant: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Chika Myoga, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Publication number: 20120103166
    Abstract: A signal processing device that identifies a piece of music of an input signal by comparing the input signal with a plurality of reference signals including only a piece of music includes a weight distribution generating section that generates a weight distribution corresponding to a likeness to music in regions of the input signal transformed into a time-frequency domain, and a similarity calculating section that calculates degrees of similarity between a feature quantity in the regions of the input signal transformed into the time-frequency domain and feature quantities in the regions of the reference signals transformed into the time-frequency domain on the basis of the weighting based on the weight distribution.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 20, 2011
    Publication date: May 3, 2012
    Inventors: Takashi SHIBUYA, Keisuke Toyama, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20120057722
    Abstract: Disclosed herein is a noise removing apparatus, including: an object sound emphasis section adapted to carry out an object sound emphasis process for observation signals of first and second microphones to produce an object sound estimation signal; a noise estimation section adapted to carry out a noise estimation process for the observation signals to produce a noise estimation signal; a post filtering section adapted to remove noise components remaining in the object sound estimation signal using the noise estimation signal; a correction coefficient calculation section adapted to calculate, for each frequency, a correction coefficient for correcting the post filtering process based on the object sound estimation signal and the noise estimation signal; and a correction coefficient changing section adapted to change those of the correction coefficients which belong to a frequency band suffering from spatial aliasing such that a peak appearing at a particular frequency is suppressed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 2, 2011
    Publication date: March 8, 2012
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Keiichi Osako, Toshiyuki Sekiya, Ryuichi Namba, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20120026345
    Abstract: A mechanical noise suppression apparatus includes: a framing section adapted to divide an input signal into frames of a predetermined time length; a Fourier transform section adapted to transform framed signals obtained by the framing section into a frequency spectrum of a frequency domain; a mechanical noise reduction section adapted to correct the frequency spectrum of the input signal obtained by the Fourier transform section based on frequency spectrum information of mechanical noise to suppress the mechanical noise; an inverse Fourier transform section adapted to return the frequency spectrum corrected by the mechanical noise reduction section into framed signals of a time domain; and a frame synthesis section adapted to carry out frame synthesis of the framed signals of frames obtained by the inverse Fourier transform section to obtain an output signal in which the mechanical noise is suppressed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 15, 2011
    Publication date: February 2, 2012
    Applicant: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Keiichi Osako, Toshiyuki Sekiya, Toshiyuki Kumakura, Mototsugu Abe
  • Patent number: 8103062
    Abstract: A video processing apparatus includes: face-area detection means for detecting a face area included in a frame forming video data; trace-generation means for generating a frame identification corresponding to a start and an end of a trace including, as a unit, a set of frames from an appearance of the face area to a disappearance on the basis of the detection; representative face-area information generation means for selecting a representative face area from the face area included in frames forming the trace and generating representative face-area information representing contents of the representative face area; and video-data appended information generation means for generating video-data appended information relating the frame identification corresponding to a start and an end of the trace to the representative face-area information for the video data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 23, 2006
    Date of Patent: January 24, 2012
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Patent number: 8085953
    Abstract: An audio-signal time-axis expansion/compression method for subjecting an audio signal to time-axis expansion/compression at a time domain includes the steps of: cross-fade-signal generating wherein a first period and a second period which are similar within the audio signal are employed to generate the cross-fade signal of the first period signal and the second period signal; correction-signal generating wherein the difference signal between the first period signal and the second period signal is subjected to time-axis reversal, and is multiplied with a window function to generate a correction signal; and connection-waveform generating wherein the cross-fade signal and the correction signal are added to generate a connection waveform for subjecting the audio signal to time-axis expansion/compression at the time domain.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 27, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Osamu Nakanura, Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Publication number: 20110293176
    Abstract: An apparatus for detecting a cut change based on a similarity between a first image and a second image, includes a unit for generating one of a luminance histogram and a color histogram of each of the first image and the second image, a unit for generating a spatial correlation image representing a correlation between spatial layouts of the first image and the second image, a unit for calculating a histogram similarity representing a similarity between the histogram of the first image and the histogram of the second image, a unit for calculating a spatial correlation image similarity representing a similarity between the spatial correlation image of the first image and the spatial correlation image of the second image, and a unit for determining whether a border between the first image and the second image is a cut change based on the histogram similarity and the spatial correlation image similarity.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 4, 2011
    Publication date: December 1, 2011
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi
  • Publication number: 20110274411
    Abstract: An information processing device for analyzing motion and color of an image of a program and detecting shot sound and cheering of golf includes an extraction unit that extracts a notable interval which is a notable time interval of the program based on the motion of the image, a computation unit that computes a play scene level indicating a degree to which the notable interval is a play scene of the golf based on the motion, color and shot sound of the notable interval extracted by the extraction unit, and a determination unit that determines whether or not the notable interval is a play scene of the golf based on the play scene level computed by the computation unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 7, 2011
    Publication date: November 10, 2011
    Inventors: Takao OKUDA, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20110255005
    Abstract: An information processing device includes a change point detection unit which detects change points of a moving image, a transition detection unit which detects transition of a subject, a composition similarity degree information generation unit which generates composition similarity degree information, based on feature amounts of the compositions of the images configuring the moving image included between the change points, a voice similarity degree information generation unit which generates voice similarity degree information, based on a feature amount of the voice data associated with the moving image included between the change points, and a determination unit which determines whether or not the moving image included between the change points is a moving image corresponding to the specific scene, based on the detected transition, the generated composition similarity degree information and the generated voice similarity degree information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 13, 2011
    Publication date: October 20, 2011
    Inventors: Chika MYOGA, Mototsugu ABE
  • Publication number: 20110255710
    Abstract: A signal processing apparatus includes an absolute value unit configured to convert an audio signal into absolute values, a representative value calculation unit configured to calculate representative values of consecutive sample values included in blocks of the audio signal which has been converted into the absolute values using at least maximum sample values among values of the samples included in the blocks for individual blocks, an average value calculation unit configured to determine a section which includes a predetermined number of consecutive blocks as a frame and calculate a maximum value of the representative values of the blocks included in the frame and an average value of the representative values of the blocks included in the frame, and a detector configured to detect click noise in the frame on the basis of a ratio of the maximum value to the average value.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 4, 2011
    Publication date: October 20, 2011
    Inventors: Keisuke TOYAMA, Mototsugu Abe
  • Publication number: 20110231187
    Abstract: A voice processing device includes a zone detection unit which detects a voice zone including a voice signal or a non-steady sound zone including a non-steady signal other than the voice signal from an input signal and a filter calculation unit that calculates a filter coefficient for holding the voice signal in the voice zone and for suppressing the non-steady signal in the non-steady sound zone according to the detection result by the zone detection unit, in which the filter calculation unit calculates the filter coefficient by using a filter coefficient calculated in the non-steady sound zone for the voice zone and using a filter coefficient calculated in the voice zone for the non-steady sound zone.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2011
    Publication date: September 22, 2011
    Inventors: Toshiyuki SEKIYA, Mototsugu ABE
  • Publication number: 20110228951
    Abstract: A sound processing apparatus includes a target sound emphasizing unit configured to acquire a sound frequency component by emphasizing target sound in input sound in which the target sound and noise are included, a target sound suppressing unit configured to acquire a noise frequency component by suppressing the target sound in the input sound, a gain computing unit configured to compute a gain value to be multiplied by the sound frequency component using a gain function that provides a gain value and has a slope that are less than predetermined values when an energy ratio of the sound frequency component to the noise frequency component is less than or equal to a predetermined value, and a gain multiplier unit configured to multiply the sound frequency component by the gain value computed by the gain computing unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2011
    Publication date: September 22, 2011
    Inventors: Toshiyuki SEKIYA, Keiichi Osako, Mototsugu Abe
  • Patent number: 7962007
    Abstract: A signal processing device and a signal processing method can accurately detect CMs out of broadcast signals and also be used for storing, accessing, retrieving and viewing/listening to CMs. CM detecting section (202) detects CM sections out of a broadcast signal. CM extracting section (201) extracts the signal part for the CM section from the broadcast signal on the basis of the CM section detection signal (202a) of the CM detecting section (202) and CM characteristics extracting section (203) extracts the characteristic value of the CM. Then, CM recording section (205) records the signal of the CM section and the characteristic value. CM index generating section (206) generates CM index information by using the signal of the CM section and the characteristic value and characteristics comparing section (204) determines agreement/disagreement of CMs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 26, 2001
    Date of Patent: June 14, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Mototsugu Abe, Masayuki Nishiguchi