According to some aspects, a method of monitoring an acoustic environment of a mobile device, at least one computer readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed, perform such a method and/or a mobile device configured to perform such a method is provided. The method comprises receiving, by the mobile device, acoustic input from the environment of the mobile device, detecting whether the acoustic input includes a voice command from a user without requiring receipt of an explicit trigger from the user, and initiating responding to the detected voice command.

Methods and apparatus for detecting a voice command

To allow for detecting hotwords on multiple devices.SOLUTION: A method, system and apparatus including a computer program encoded on a computer storage medium, for hotword detection on multiple devices are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes receiving, by a first computing device, audio data corresponding to an utterance. The method also includes determining a first value corresponding to a likelihood that the utterance includes a hotword. The method further includes receiving a second value corresponding to a likelihood that the utterance includes the hotword, the second value being determined by a second computing device. The method further includes comparing the first value and the second value. The method further includes initiating speech recognition processing on the audio data based on the comparison between the first value and the second value.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Hotword detection on multiple devices

A method and a system for identifying users in a multi-user environment are disclosed. The method includes receiving audio data corresponding to an utterance of a voice command captured by a user device, the user device having a plurality of different users; for each of a plurality of different users of the user device, obtaining corresponding speaker verification data; generating a correspondingspeaker verification score using the corresponding speaker verification data and the audio data, the corresponding speaker verification score indicating the possibility that the utterance of the voicecommand is spoken by a corresponding one of the plurality of different users of the user device; identifying the speaker of the utterance of the voice command as a user of the plurality of differentusers of the user device associated with the highest corresponding speaker verification score; and using a voice recognition module to process the voice command to identify a particular action for theuser device to perform, when the particular action is executed by the user device, initiating an application on the user device to access the application based on the user permission associated withthe identified speaker.

Speaker verification using co-location information

A voice activation system is provided. The voice activation system includes a first stage configured to output a first activation signal if at least one energy characteristic of a received audio signal satisfies at least one threshold and a second stage configured to transition from a first state to a second state in response to the first activation signal and, when in the second state, to output a second activation signal if at least a portion of a profile of the audio signal substantially matches at least one predetermined profile.

Power-efficient voice activation

A method at a first electronic device of multiple electronic devices, each electronic device of the plurality of electronic devices including one or more microphones and a speaker, includes detecting a voice input; determining a quality score for the detected voice input; communicating the quality score to the other devices of the plurality of electronic devices; receiving quality scores generated by the other devices for detection of the voice input by the other devices; if the quality score generated by the first electronic device is the highest amongst the quality scores, outputting an audible and/or visual response to the detected voice input, where the other devices of the plurality of electronic devices forgo outputting an audible response to the detected voice input; and if the quality score generated by the first electronic device is not the highest amongst the quality scores, forgoing outputting a response to the detected voice input.

Device leadership negotiation among voice interface devices

A signal processing apparatus includes a speech recognition system and a voice activity detection unit. The voice activity detection unit is coupled to the speech recognition system, and arranged for detecting whether an audio signal is a voice signal and accordingly generating a voice activity detection result to the speech recognition system to control whether the speech recognition system should perform speech recognition upon the audio signal.

Signal processing apparatus having voice activity detection unit and related signal processing methods

A signal processing apparatus for generating a noise cancellation signal in accordance with a noise signal includes an inverting circuit and a selecting circuit. The inverting circuit is employed for inverting a first signal to generate an inverted first signal. The selecting circuit is coupled to the inverting circuit, and employed for selecting one of the first signal and the inverted first signal as an output signal.

Hung Chia-Yu

Papers

Signal processing apparatus having voice activity detection unit and related signal processing methods

Signal processing apparatus