JP2003337593A - Remote controller and electronic equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a remote controller and electronic equipment in which the function of voice recognition is developed and good operability is available. <P>SOLUTION: The remote controller 2 has a function of recognizing a voice uttered by an operator and a function of specifying the operator. The contents of operation data are stored in a set establishment table form for every specified operator in a speaker operation data storage section 31. When the operator is replaced with another operator, the set establishment table is transmitted to an operation-oriented device to effectuate establishment contents included in the set establishment table. This changes the establishment of the operation- oriented device to establishment suitable for the new operator. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic device such as a television and an audio device and a remote control device therefor.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Today, there is a trend to improve the usability by making it possible to operate electronic devices in the home by voice. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-275176 discloses a remote control capable of remotely controlling a control target device by a voice emitted by an operator without lowering the volume of the control target device even in an environment with ambient noise. The device is shown.

Further, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-227799, based on the audio data reproduced and output from the audio reproducing device, from the audio input to the microphone, the audio reproduced and output from the audio reproducing device and input to the microphone. There is shown an apparatus that performs a process of removing a noise and performs voice recognition of a voice after such a noise removing process.

[0004]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention]
In the remote control device disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 176, the voice of an unspecified speaker is recognized and the operation by voice is possible. The remote control device having is not shown. In addition, JP 2000
-227799 discloses a telephone device that recognizes a voice uttered by a user, except for a voice output from a voice reproduction device. However, this device also only switches a conventional manual operation to a voice operation. It does not have more functions than the operation by.

The present invention has been made in view of the above points, and an object of the present invention is to develop a voice recognition function and to provide a remote control device and an electronic device which are easy to use.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, the invention described in claim 1 is input through a microphone.
In a remote control device having a voice recognition function for recognizing a voice emitted by an operator and transmitting an operation signal to an operation target device, operator voice information obtained by removing ambient noise from a voice input through the microphone is displayed. An operator specifying unit that identifies and specifies an operator based on the identified operator voice information, and changes the setting of the operation target device to a setting suitable for the operator specified by the operator specifying unit And a setting changing means.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in an electronic device that can be remotely controlled by a remote control device that transmits a voice uttered by an operator, which is input via a microphone, from the voice transmitted from the remote control device. An operator identification unit that identifies operator voice information excluding ambient noise and identifies an operator based on the identified operator voice information, and a setting suitable for the operator identified by the operator identification unit. , And setting change means for changing the setting of the electronic device.

[0008]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. (First Embodiment) FIG. 1 shows a television set (hereinafter referred to as "TV set"), which is an electronic device according to a first embodiment of the present invention, and a remote control device (hereinafter referred to as "remote control device"). It is a figure which shows a relationship. The TV set 1 and the remote control device 2 each include a wireless transmission / reception unit 1
1 and a wireless transmission / reception unit 21, and are configured to be able to perform wireless communication with each other. The wireless transmission / reception unit 11 of the TV set 1 transmits the received voice of the TV and identification data for identifying the TV set 1, and receives a TV set operation command and a set setting table described later. On the other hand, the wireless transmission / reception unit 21 of the remote control device 2 receives voice and data transmitted from the TV set 1, and transmits operation commands and set setting tables for the TV set 1.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of the TV set 1. That is, the TV set 1 includes the wireless transmission / reception unit 11, a modulation / demodulation unit 12 that modulates and demodulates a transmitted / received signal, and a voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 1 that synthesizes and separates voice, data, and commands.
3 and 3. Although not shown, the TV set 1
Is provided with a reception unit for broadcast radio waves, a display unit for images, a speaker for audio output, an amplifier circuit, and the like, and demodulates received broadcast waves, displays received images, and outputs received voice.

In the TV set 1, the voice (received voice) in the set and the set identification data are input to the voice / data / command separating / synthesizing unit 13 to synthesize the voice and the set identifying data. The output signal of the voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 13 is modulated by the modulation / demodulation unit 12, and the modulated transmission signal is transmitted to the remote control device 2 as a radio wave by the wireless transmission / reception unit 11 via the antenna. .

On the other hand, the radio wave transmitted from the remote control device 2 is input from the radio transmitter / receiver 11 to the modulator / demodulator and demodulated. The voice / data / command separating / synthesizing unit 13 separates the operation command and the set setting table from the signal thus received, and outputs the separated operation command and the set setting table to a CPU (Central Process) not shown.
sing unit). As a result, the channel of the TV set 1 is changed, the menu is customized, that is, the process of setting the TV set 1 to the state described in the set setting table is executed.

When there are a plurality of operation target devices, the identification data is combined with the audio signal and transmitted to the remote control device 2 so that the remote control device 2 identifies the operation target device. Address data based on IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) can be used as the identification data. As a result, an individual address for each device,
That is, since the identification information is added, even if there are a plurality of operation target devices, it is possible to accurately operate the target devices.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the main part of the remote control device 2. The remote control device 2 includes the wireless transmission / reception unit 21, a modulation / demodulation unit 22 that modulates and demodulates a transmitted / received signal, and a voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 23 that synthesizes and separates voice, data, and commands.
An operation command in accordance with the switch data, a switch unit 24 for switching the set setting table, a filter 25 for filtering a sound (TV reference sound) transmitted from the TV set 1, and an operator (talk). Person 27) for converting a voice generated by a person) into an electric signal, an amplifier 26 for amplifying an output signal of the microphone 27, and a microphone input voice to a TV.
A subtraction processing unit 28 that performs a process of subtracting the reference voice, and a voice identification / determination unit 29 that identifies the speaker voice information and the content of the speaker voice based on the output signal of the subtraction processing unit 28.
And a speaker identification unit 30 that identifies a speaker (operator) based on the identified speaker voice information, and a speaker operation data storage unit 31 that stores operation voice data for each speaker.

The radio transmitter / receiver 21 receives the radio wave transmitted from the TV set 1, and the modulator / demodulator 22 demodulates the received signal. The voice / data / command separating / synthesizing unit 23
TV under the environment where TV sound and identification data are separated and the separated TV sound is installed and operating TV set 1.
It is input to the filter 25 as a reference voice. Filter 25
Thus, the TV reference sound is filtered and input to the subtraction processing unit 28 of the sound processing unit. On the other hand, the speaker (operator)
And the TV sound output from the speaker of the TV set 1 are input from the microphone 27 to the subtraction processing unit 28 of the audio processing unit through the amplifier 26.

The separation of the speaker voice and the TV reference voice is performed by subtracting the TV reference voice from the microphone input voice in the subtraction processing unit 28, and thereafter, the voice recognition and the content discrimination are performed for the voice identification and the voice identification. The determination unit 29 executes this. The output signal of the subtraction processing unit 28 does not include the voice output from the speaker of the TV set 1, but includes other ambient noises. Therefore, first, only the speaker voice information excluding such ambient noises is included. Identification processing is performed. Then, a process of determining the content of the identified speaker voice information, that is, the meaning content of the speaker voice information such as "channel 1" or "volume 4" is performed. The voice identification / determination unit 29 inputs the identified speaker voice information to the speaker identification unit 30. On the other hand, the determined content is input as a TV operation command to the voice / data / command combining / separating unit 24 via the switch unit 24, and is converted into a transmission signal in the modulation / demodulation unit 22. The transmission signal is transmitted and output from the wireless transmission / reception unit 21 to the TV set 1. By receiving this radio wave, the TV set 1 operates according to the operation change instruction of the speaker.

The speaker identification unit 30 is a voice identification / discrimination unit 29.
The speaker (operator) is specified based on the speaker voice information input from. The speaker identification is, for example, the pitch of a voice,
It is performed based on personal information such as the size, speaking speed, and intonation, which is stored in advance in a memory (not shown). The specified speaker information is input to the speaker operation data storage unit 31, and the operation command determined by the voice recognition / determination unit 29 is stored as a set setting table for each speaker.

The speaker operation data storage unit 31 stores operation data in the form of a table for each speaker. FIG. 5 shows a specific example of the set setting table. The set setting table consists of menus, setting items, channels, and large volume items. The contents of the menu include the size of characters (small, normal, large) and the order of setting items (fixed, fixed,
The order of frequency of use), screen type (for children, adults, senior citizens), and volume setting (average value, final value) are provided. In addition, as contents regarding the setting items, color, sharpness, contrast, brightness, and audio mode (main, sub, main / sub) are provided. Regarding channels, channel VHF, channel UH
F and channel BS (satellite broadcasting) can be set respectively.

In the set setting table, for example, the final operation data may be stored for the channel, and the volume may be the average value of the volume designated so far, or the final volume may be stored and the average value may be stored. Alternatively, the final volume may be selectable. For other settings (menus and setting items), the final contents of the settings are stored as numerical data for each item.

Next, the operation of the switch section 24 will be described. The operation command determined by the voice recognition / determination unit 29 and the set setting table output from the speaker operation data storage unit 31 are input to the switch unit 24. As for the SW data for switching this, for example, when the speaker (operator) changes, first, the set setting table is transmitted to the TV set 1 to change the TV set to a setting suitable for a new speaker. Next, it switches to the operation command and executes the operation command input by the speaker. If the speakers are the same, the set setting table is not transmitted and only the operation command is transmitted to the TV set 1.

Compressed audio digital data can be used as the reference audio transmitted from the TV set 1.
Recently, in an era where a TV set also has an HDD recording device (a storage device using a hard disk as a storage medium),
In the HDD recording device, both video and audio are recorded as digital data. If this voice digital data is transmitted to the remote control device 2, the necessary information can be transmitted with much less data than the voice data transmitted as an analog signal, and a low communication rate can be applied. Further, all the voice recognition in the remote control device 2 can be processed by digital data, and the digital signal can be easily delayed, so that the subtraction with the environmental sound input from the microphone 27 can be performed at an accurate time. It can be executed, and as a result, improvement of the voice recognition rate can be expected.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of the remote control device 2 shown in FIG. When the voice of the speaker is input (step S1), the voice is recognized (step S2). Next, command discrimination (step S3) and speaker identification (step S4) are performed. In step S5, the operation command is stored in the set setting table of the speaker and the set setting table is read. Step S
In 6, the operation command is output when the speaker is the same as the previous processing, and the set setting table is output when the speaker is different from the previous processing. Then step S
The data output from 6 is transmitted to the TV set 1 (step S7), and then the voice input is awaited (step S8).

As described above, in the present embodiment, the speaker (operator) of the input voice is specified, and the set setting table is stored in the speaker operation data storage section 18 for each speaker. When a change occurs, the set setting table corresponding to the new speaker is transmitted to the TV set 1 so that the setting of the TV set becomes a setting suitable for the new speaker, so that the new speaker changes the setting. The effort is reduced and usability can be improved. For example, since the speaker is an elderly person, when the daily volume is high, the volume for daily use can be reproduced only by executing the channel change command, and it is not necessary to set the volume individually.

(Second Embodiment) FIG. 6 shows a second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 7 shows the configuration of the main part of the TV set 1a according to the second embodiment, and FIG. 7 shows the configuration of the main part of the remote control device 2a according to the second embodiment of the present invention. In the present embodiment, a sound processing unit is arranged in the TV set 1a. In this embodiment,
The third embodiment is the same as the first embodiment except for the points described below.

The TV set 1a includes a wireless transceiver 11 and
A modulation / demodulation unit 12, a voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 13a, a filter 14, a subtraction processing unit 15, a voice recognition / determination unit 16, a speaker identification unit 17, and a speaker operation data storage unit 18. , And a switch unit 19. The filter 14, the subtraction processing unit 15, the voice recognition / determination unit 16, the speaker identification unit 17, the speaker operation data storage unit 18, and the switch unit 19 are the filter 25, the subtraction processing unit 28, and the subtraction processing unit 28 illustrated in FIG.
It has the same functions as the voice recognition / discrimination unit 29, the speaker identification unit 30, the speaker operation data storage unit 31, and the switch unit 24.

Voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 13
The a inputs the identification data of the TV set 1a to the modulation / demodulation unit 12. Thereby, the identification data is transmitted to the remote controller 2a. The voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 13a subtracts the operation voice (including the reception voice of the TV set 1a) transmitted from the remote control device 2a.
And the operation command input by the push switch of the remote control device 2a.

The TV reference voice (received voice output from the speaker) is input to the subtraction processing unit 15 via the filter 14. The voice recognition / determination unit 16 inputs the recognized voice operation command to the speaker operation data storage unit 18 and the switch unit 19. The speaker identification unit 17 identifies the speaker of the voice operation command and inputs it to the speaker operation data storage unit 18. The speaker operation data storage unit 18 stores the content of the voice operation command in the form of a set setting table for each speaker, and inputs the set setting table corresponding to the speaker currently operating to the switch unit 19.

The switch section 19 selects and outputs one of a voice operation command, a push switch operation command, and a set setting table. The switch unit 19 selects the set setting table when the speaker changes, and when the speaker is the same and receives the voice operation command, selects the voice operation command and receives the push switch operation command. If so, the push switch operation command is selected and output. The output data of the switch unit 19 is supplied to a CPU (not shown), and the setting stored in the set setting table is realized or the process according to the operation command is executed.

On the other hand, the remote control device 2a includes a wireless transmission / reception unit 2
1 / modulator / demodulator 22 and voice / data / command separation /
The synthesizing unit 23a, the amplifying unit 26, the microphone 27, and the push switch operating unit 28 in which a push switch for operation is arranged are provided. Voice / data / command separation /
The synthesizing unit 23a separates the identification data transmitted from the TV set 1a, and inputs the voice operation command input from the microphone 27 or the push switch operation command input via the push switch operation unit 28 to the modulation / demodulation unit 22. To do. The voice operation command or the push switch operation command is transmitted to the TV set 1a.

As described above, in the present embodiment, the voice processing unit (subtraction processing unit 15, voice recognition / determination unit 1 is provided on the TV set side.
6, a speaker identification unit 17), a speaker operation data storage unit 18
When the speaker (operator) is changed, the contents of the set setting table corresponding to the new speaker are inputted to the CPU by providing the switch section 19 and the setting of the TV set is made suitable for the new speaker. As a result, a new speaker can reduce the trouble of changing the setting and improve the usability. Further, since the configuration of the remote control device 2a is simplified, the life of the battery used in the remote control device can be extended.

The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, but various modifications can be made. For example, the device to be operated by the remote control device is not limited to the TV set, and may be an electronic device such as an audio device or a video disc reproducing device.

[0031]

As described above in detail, according to the invention described in claim 1, the operator voice information indicating the voice uttered by the operator is identified, and the operator is based on the identified operator voice information. Is specified, and the setting suitable for the specified operator is
The settings of the operation target device are changed. Therefore, when the operator changes, the device setting suitable for the operator is automatically performed, so that the trouble of changing the setting is reduced and the usability can be improved.

According to the second aspect of the invention, the operator voice information indicating the voice uttered by the operator is identified, the operator is identified based on the identified operator voice information, and the identified. The setting of the electronic device is changed to the setting suitable for the operator. Therefore, when the operator changes, the device setting suitable for the operator is automatically performed, so that the trouble of changing the setting is reduced and the usability can be improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a relationship between a television set, which is an electronic device according to a first embodiment of the present invention, and a remote control device.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of the television set shown in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of the remote control device of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining a process in the remote control device of FIG.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a data setting table.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a television set according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a remote control device according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1,1a TV set 2,2a Remote control device 11 Wireless transceiver 12 Modulator / demodulator 13, 13a Voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 21 Wireless transceiver 22 Modulator / demodulator 23, 23a Voice / data / command separation / synthesis unit 19,24 Switch (setting change means) 27 microphone 15, 28 Subtraction processing unit 16, 29 Voice identification / discrimination unit (operator identification means) 17,30 Speaker identification unit (operator identification means) 18, 31 Speaker operation data storage unit (setting change means)

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Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A remote control device, which has a voice recognition function for recognizing a voice uttered by an operator and which is inputted through a microphone, and which transmits an operation signal to a device to be operated, wherein the remote control device is inputted through the microphone. Suitable for the operator identification means for identifying the operator voice information from which the ambient noise is removed from the voice, and for identifying the operator based on the identified operator voice information, and the operator identified by the operator identification means And a setting changing unit for changing the setting of the operation target device. 2. An electronic device that is remotely controllable by a remote control device that transmits a voice uttered by an operator, which is input via a microphone, wherein the operator removes ambient noise from the voice transmitted from the remote control device. An operator identification unit that identifies voice information and identifies an operator based on the identified operator voice information, and a setting of the electronic device that is suitable for the operator identified by the operator identification unit. An electronic device comprising: a setting changing unit for changing the setting.