Recent studies in computer vision have shown that, while practically invisible to a human observer, skin color changes due to blood flow can be captured on face videos and, surprisingly, be used to estimate the heart rate (HR). While considerable progress has been made in the last few years, still many issues remain open. In particular, state of-the-art approaches are not robust enough to operate in natural conditions (e.g. in case of spontaneous movements, facial expressions, or illumination changes). Opposite to previous approaches that estimate the HR by processing all the skin pixels inside a fixed region of interest, we introduce a strategy to dynamically select face regions useful for robust HR estimation. Our approach, inspired by recent advances on matrix completion theory, allows us to predict the HR while simultaneously discover the best regions of the face to be used for estimation. Thorough experimental evaluation conducted on public benchmarks suggests that the proposed approach significantly outperforms state-of the-art HR estimation methods in naturalistic conditions.

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Self-Adaptive Matrix Completion for Heart Rate Estimation from Face Videos under Realistic Conditions

A digital broadcast transmitting/receiving system and a method for processing data are disclosed. The method for processing data may enhance the receiving performance of the receiving system by performing additional coding and multiplexing processes on the traffic information data and transmitting the processed data. Thus, robustness is provided to the traffic information data, thereby enabling the data to respond strongly against the channel environment which is always under constant and vast change.

Method of processing traffic information and digital broadcast system

The invention relates to an automated estimation of the position (co-ordinates) of a set of loudspeakers in a ioom Based on measured impulse responses the distances between each pair of loudspeakers are estimated, thereby forming a distance matrix, and the resultant distance matrix is used by a multidimensional scaling (MDS) algorithm to estimate the co¬ ordinates of each individual loudspeaker An improved co-ordinate estimation can, if desired, be derived by utilising the stress values provided by the MDS algorithm.

Loudspeaker position estimation

Example methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture to provide media content are disclosed. A disclosed example method includes receiving audio output by a first media presentation device, obtaining at least one of a Nielsen code or an Arbitron® code from the audio, the obtained code being representative of at least one of the first media content or a broadcaster of the first media content, obtaining second media content based on the extracted code, and presenting the second media content on a second media presentation device different from the first media presentation device.

Methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture to provide secondary content in association with primary broadcast media content

The present invention relates to a device and a method for extracting information from detected characteristic signals. A data stream (76, 78, 80, 82) derivable from electromagnetic radiation (14) emitted or reflected by an object (11) is received and a plurality of characteristic index elements (50) varying over time can be extracted therefrom. The index elements (50) comprise physiological information (48) indicative of at least one at least partially periodic vital signal (12), and a disturbing signal component (58). For eliminating the disturbing signal component (58) to a great extent, the characteristic index elements (50) can be projected to a disturbance-reduced index element (64) having a distinct orientation in relation to a presumed orientation of the disturbing signal component (58). The disturbance-reduced index element (64) is chosen so as to reflect a dominant main orientation and length of the disturbing signal component (58) over time. Consequently, the mainly genuine physiological information (48) extracted from the data stream (76, 78, 80, 82) in this way can be utilized for determining the at least one at least partially periodic vital signal (12).

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Device and method for extracting information from characteristic signals

A noise canceling system comprises a microphone (103) generating a captured signal and a sound transducer (101) radiating a sound canceling audio signal in the audio environment A feedback path (109) from the microphone (103) to the sound transducer (101) comprises a non-adaptive canceling filter (115) and a variable gain (117) and receives the captured signal and generates a drive signal for the sound transducer (101) A gain detector determines a secondary path gain for at least part of a secondary path of a feedback loop The secondary path may include the microphone (103), the sound transducer (101), and the acoustic path therebetween but does not include the non-adaptive canceling filter (115) or the variable gain (117) A gain controller (121) adjusts the gain of the variable gain (117) in response to the secondary path gain The system uses simple gain estimation and control to efficiently compensate for variations in the secondary path to provide improved stability and noise canceling performance

Active audio noise cancelling

A method of processing a signal including at least a component representative of a periodic phenomenon in a living being includes obtaining at least one first signal having at least a component representative of a periodic phenomenon in a living being. Separate data representative of at least a periodic component of motion of the living being are obtained by obtaining a sequence of images showing the living being, synchronized with the at least one first signal, and carrying out video-based motion analysis of the sequence of images. The data are used at least to suppress a component of the first signal corresponding to the periodic component of motion of the living being.

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Method and system for processing a signal including at least a component representative of a periodic phenomenon in a living being

A method of facilitating obtaining a first signal, for analysis to characterize at least one periodic component, includes obtaining two second signals representative of intensities of electromagnetic radiation. The first signal is at least derivable from an output signal obtainable by applying a transformation to the second signals such that any value of the output signal is based on values from each respective second signal at corresponding points in time. The method further includes obtaining a value of a variable determining influences of components of respective second signals on the output signal when the signals corresponding to the second signals are captured and the transformation is applied, by (i) analyzing the first, second and/or the output signals to select a value of a parameter corresponding to a respective one of the variables; or (ii) calculating values of at least one time-varying factor corresponding to a respective one of the variables.

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Method and system for obtaining a first signal for analysis to characterize at least one periodic component thereof

The present invention refers to an active sound reduction system and method for attenuation of sound emitted by a primary sound source, especially for attenuation of snoring sounds emitted by a human being. This system comprises a primary sound source, at least one speaker as a secondary sound source for producing an attenuating sound to be superposed with the sound emitted by said primary sound source, a reference microphone for receiving sound from said primary sound source, and at least one error microphone being allocated to each speaker to form a speaker/microphone pair. The at least one error microphone is provided as a directional microphone pointing at its allocated speaker to receive residual sound resulting from the superposition of the sounds from the primary sound source and the corresponding speaker. The error microphone and speaker of at least one speaker/microphone pair and the primary sound source are arranged substantially collinear. A control unit is provided to receive an output reference signal of the reference microphone representing the sound received by the reference microphone and an output error signal of the at least one error microphone representing the sound received by the at least one error microphone and to calculate a control signal for the speaker from the output reference signal and the output error signal.

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Active sound reduction system and method

The invention describes a method of determining the distance (d12) between two loudspeakers (L1, L2), wherein the method comprises the steps of providing a test signal (N), combining the test signal (N) with a sound signal (S) to give a combined signal (SN) in which the test signal is imperceptible to a listener (4), and issuing the combined signal (SN) by means of a first loudspeaker (L1). The combined signal (SN) is detected by a detecting means (M2) associated with the second loudspeaker (L2) and processed to obtain an acoustic impulse response (IR), which is used to determine the distance (d1,2) between the first loudspeaker (L1) and the second loudspeaker (L2). The invention further describes a system (1) for determining the distance (d1,2) between two loudspeakers (L1, L2) and an acoustic sound system, comprising a number of loudspeakers (L1, L2, ..., Lk) for reproduction of multi-channel sound, and a system (1) for determining the distances (d 1,2, d 2,3, ... d k-i,k) between the loudspeakers (L1, L2, ..., Lk) in order to automatically configure the loudspeakers (L1, L2, ..., Lk) for that acoustic sound system.

Adriaan Johan Van Leest

Papers

Active audio noise cancelling

Method and system for processing a signal including at least a component representative of a periodic phenomenon in a living being

Method and system for obtaining a first signal for analysis to characterize at least one periodic component thereof

Active sound reduction system and method

Method of and system for determining distances between loudspeakers