Sound Bot – Sound processing device, sound processing method, and sound processing program

TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION

A sound processing device includes a separation unit configured to separate at least a music signal and a speech signal from a recorded audio signal, a noise suppression unit, a music feature value estimation unit, a speech recognition unit, a noise-processing confidence calculation unit, a music feature value estimation confidence calculation unit, a speech recognition confidence calculation unit, and a control unit configured to calculate at least one behavioural decision function of a speech behavioural decision function associated with speech and a music behavioural decision function associated with music based on a noise-processing confidence value, a music feature value estimation confidence value, and a speech recognition confidence value and to determine behaviour corresponding to the calculated behavioural decision function.
- Challenge | Opportunity
In recent years, robots such as humanoids or home robots performing social interactions with persons have actively been studied. The study of musical interaction in which a robot is allowed to hear music and is allowed to sing a song or to move its body to the music is important to allow the robot to give a natural and rich expression. In order to allow a robot to hear speech or music, it is necessary to mount a sound collecting device such as a microphone on the robot. However, sound collected by the sound collecting device of the robot includes a variety of noise. In this way, when the S/N ratio of the collected audio signal is lowered, accuracy of speech recognition is lowered, affecting the interaction between robots and the environment where they operate.

BENEFITS

• Improved productivity (20% or more)
• Possibility of having in production different product references simultaneously (up to 5)
• Allow small production lots
• Reduction of work in progress
• Reduction of lead time
• Throughput time reduction from several days to hours 
• No intermediate stocks
• No waiting time between departments
• More precise balancing and control production line
Robots can, with this invention, correctly interpret sound to act accordingly. An example is the need to perform beat tracking when dancing or the like. For that it is necessary to reduce the influence of noise and to accurately detect beat intervals from a music signal. However, when a user speaks during the music, the speech from the user has an adverse influence on detection of the beat intervals. A music signal has an adverse influence on recognition of the speech from the user. Accordingly, there is a problem in that it is difficult for a robot to accurately give a behavioural response to the speech from the user while detecting beat intervals.  The present invention is made in consideration of the above-mentioned problem and an object thereof is to provide a sound processing device, a sound processing method, and a sound processing program which can accurately detect beat intervals and accurately give a behavioural response to speech of a user even when music, speech, and noise are simultaneously input.

LIMITATIONS

N.A.

APPLICATIONS

• Real-time applications:
- Human/Robot interaction
- Active audition humanoids
- Audio control applications 

MATERIALS