Classifications

• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A63—SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
  • A63H—TOYS, e.g. TOPS, DOLLS, HOOPS OR BUILDING BLOCKS
  • A63H5/00—Musical or noise- producing devices for additional toy effects other than acoustical
• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A63—SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
  • A63H—TOYS, e.g. TOPS, DOLLS, HOOPS OR BUILDING BLOCKS
  • A63H3/00—Dolls
  • A63H3/14—Dolls into which the fingers of the hand can be inserted, e.g. hand-puppets
• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A63—SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
  • A63H—TOYS, e.g. TOPS, DOLLS, HOOPS OR BUILDING BLOCKS
  • A63H3/00—Dolls
  • A63H3/28—Arrangements of sound-producing means in dolls; Means in dolls for producing sounds
• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A63—SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
  • A63H—TOYS, e.g. TOPS, DOLLS, HOOPS OR BUILDING BLOCKS
  • A63H2200/00—Computerized interactive toys, e.g. dolls
• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A63—SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
  • A63H—TOYS, e.g. TOPS, DOLLS, HOOPS OR BUILDING BLOCKS
  • A63H30/00—Remote-control arrangements specially adapted for toys, e.g. for toy vehicles
  • A63H30/02—Electrical arrangements
  • A63H30/04—Electrical arrangements using wireless transmission

Definitions

• the present invention relates generally to producing audio in response to stimuli, and more particularly to generating a recognizable verbal sound or series of verbal sounds in complete synchronization with animation, such as with a manually controlled puppet figure.
• Novelty items such as greeting cards, toys and puppets which have mouths or opposed moving members and which are also capable of producing voice-like sounds are known in the art.
• One of the primary objects of such items is to give the user the impression that the item is actually "speaking” or “singing” in conjunction with the movement of the mouth or jaws as they are moved by the user and thus providing the user with more accurate control over the verbal audible events produced by the toy or puppet.
• U. S. Patent No. 4,768,232 to Milner discloses a hand-held puppet figure configured to represent a living being having hand-controllable moving parts to simulate some form of animation of the figure's mouth.
• the figure is provided with sound-generating apparatus.
• a sensor in the form of a light-sensitive photocell is mounted in the figure's mouth to allow hand-controlled animation of the puppet to vary the light received by the photocell to produce a signal indicative of mouth movement by detecting changes in light.
• a frequency generator including a voltage-controlled oscillator responsive to a voltage derived from an output counter, produces a tone signal having a pseudo-randomly varying frequency in the audio range.
• the tone signal is applied to a modulator and used to modulate the signal produced by the photocell, resulting in an audio signal having a pseudo-randomly varying pitch component, not
• the toy also includes a sound-producing unit including a speaker.
• the operator of the toy pushes a manual switch to activate the sound-producing unit thereby producing an audible sound.
• a muffler mounted near the speaker muffles the sound when the jaw members of the toy are closed and allows substantially all of the sound to emanate from the speaker when the jaw members are opened.
• U. S. Patent No. 5,447,461 to Liao discloses a sound generating hand puppet, which includes a glove worn by a player and a mouth-manipulating device secured in the head portion of the puppet glove.
• a sound generator mounted in the puppet is activated by operation of the mouth-manipulating device, which simulates opening the mouth of the puppet. This operation produces a sound imitating an animal or person's cry.
• U. S. Patent No. 6,394,874 to Kubo, et al. discloses a sound-generating finger puppet, which can be operated by a single hand.
• the figure includes a sound- producing unit within the puppet that is activated by pushing a button.
• the puppet does not include moving jaw members.
• U. S. Patent No. 5,471,192 to Dash discloses an animal figure, such as a cat, that includes a sensor and sound producing circuitry. When a user stimulates the sensor, by "petting" the figure, the output wave of an oscillating waveform may be controlled by the user. The resulting sound is an audible oscillating "rrrr” or purring sound. The characteristics of the continuous oscillating waveform do not change; only the amplitude of the sound changes. Dash does not disclose or suggest producing understandable speech in conjunction with animating parts of a toy figure. [0008] All of the above devices provide the user with an enjoyable experience by combining a form of animation of the toy figure with sound, adding some aspect of realism to a game being played with the figure.
• the sound producing unit of the item would have to be capable of responding to a variety of length of animation events, so that the beginning of the sound commences with the opening of the mouth or jaw elements of the figure, continues for the period of time that the mouth or jaw elements are open, and ends naturally as the mouth or jaw elements are closing, with the natural syllable tail end and sound decaying as does a natural speaking or singing voice when a speaker's or singer's mouth is closed.
• Another object of the invention is to provide a novelty item or toy figure having movable members, which produces verbal speech or singing in complete synchronization as the item's members are opened, remain opened, and closed.
• a further object of the invention is to provide a novelty item or toy figure having a head portion with movable members whereby animating the movable members, a prerecorded verbal syllable is actuated.
• Yet another object of the invention is to provide a novelty item or toy figure having a mouth and a sound-producing unit that uses sustainable resynthesized looped vowels where all syllables are time length manually controllable by a player.
• a further object of the invention is to provide a toy figure or novelty item having a mouth and a sound producing unit where the sequence of verbal audio events are actuated and controlled by opening and closing the item's mouth manually thus resulting in an animated sequence for each and every syllable pronounced in the speech or song within a prerecorded digital verbal audio file.
• the present invention provides the user with a sound-producing apparatus for use in conjunction with a toy in the form of a puppet having hand-movable parts simulating animation to provide controllable vocal performances that are synchronized with the manually controlled animation of the puppet.
• the invention includes a switch configured so as to produce a signal when certain hand-movable parts are moved that actuates a sound-producing unit mounted within the toy.
• the sound-producing unit produces an audio event that, when applied to a speaker, produces sound controllable by hand movements and coordinated to the animation of the puppet.
• a switch is mounted in the toy figure's mouth.
• the switch activates a sound producing unit in the form of a sound chip on which are stored a number of audio events in the form of words that are composed of syllables.
• the syllables in turn, normally, are composed of sub-syllabic units called onsets and rhymes.
• the rhymes may be further defined as having individual phonemes called the nucleus and coda, which are the smallest units of sound analysis.
• each syllable is made up of three distinctive segments: 1) a beginning called the "onset” that is activated as the mouth of the figure opens; 2) a sustainable resynthesized looped nucleus, the central segment of the syllable, that continues for as long as the mouth is open; 3) and an end segment being either the coda, or in many cases, the natural end of the preceding nucleus, that is activated as the mouth closes and provides a natural ending of the syllable's rhyme.
• a supply voltage control circuit produces the operating voltage for the electronic circuits used to implement the invention.
• the control circuit is structured to respond to the signal produced by the switch.
• a principal advantage provided by the invention is found in the realism afforded a child's toy or other amusement device having movable parts to simulate vocalized animation.
• a player can produce recognizable verbal audio events that are truly synchronized with the movement of the toy or device.
• Another advantage of the present invention is that the recognizable verbal audio events are synchronized with the movement of the mouth moving parts of the figure or device regardless of the time lapse of the movement of the mouth parts, i.e., realistic synchronization of the movement of the mouth parts and the vocal performance emanating from the figure whether the movement of the mouth parts is done rapidly or slowly, without adjusting any parts of the toy.
• FIGURE 1 illustrates a simplified diagram of an exemplary embodiment of the invention illustrating its use with a puppet
• FIGURE 2 is a schematic diagram of a verbal audio event in the form of the word "cat" generated by the invention
• FIGURE 3 is block diagram of the sound-producing unit of the invention.
• FIGURE 4 is a schematic diagram of a sequence of verbal audio events generated by the invention.
• FIGURE 5 is a schematic diagram of a verbal audio event in the form of the word "book” generated by the invention.
• a sound producing apparatus of the present invention is illustrated as a toy figure in Figure 1, where the toy figure is generally referred to by the reference numeral 10.
• Toy 10 includes head 12, which can take the form of a living being, such as an animal, fantasy figure, or a human.
• head 12 may be embodied in a glove (not shown), which can be worn on a hand and used in conjunction with any mouth controllable hand puppet.
• Head 12 includes mouth 15 having opposed resilient jaw members 14 and 16, which may be operated manually by someone playing with the toy, either by inserting a hand inside head 12 or by means of a manual actuator mounted within head 12. Jaw members 14 and 16 are biased to generally remain adjacent to each other when they are not activated.
• Toy 10 further includes sound producing unit 20, which is illustrated in
• Sound producing unit 20 includes sound chip 22, on which is mounted a memory 24, which may take the form of, for example, a memory chip, a ROM cartridge, or a flash RAM card, and processing unit 26.
• Memory 24 contains a plurality of stored verbal audio events, which, in the preferred embodiment of the invention, are comprised of verbal syllables arranged in sequences to produce recognizable songs, poems, or phrases.
• Each audio event is in the form of a word having one or more syllables.
• a syllable is defined as a unit of sound composed of a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel) and the consonants that surround the central peak.
• a syllable may be further divided into sub-syllabic units called onsets and rhymes, the onset being the first (initial) segment of a syllable (usually a consonant) and the rhyme forming the core of the syllable.
• the rhyme may be further defined as consisting of a nucleus (the second segment of the syllable, usually a vowel), which is the central segment of a syllable, and the coda (usually a consonant), which is the third and closing segment of a syllable.
• most syllables may be defined as having three segments, the initial segment (onset), the central segment (nucleus) and a closing segment (coda).
• the third segment becomes the natural tail- end of the nucleus.
• a verbal audio event in this example the one-syllable word "book” commences as jaw members 14 and 16 are moved away from each other, simulating the opening of mouth 15. Onset 52, with a sufficiently long prerecorded nucleus 54 of the syllable "book”, are heard.
• nucleus 54 jumps (transitions) to cross-fade start header 60, placed at the beginning of coda 56, and performs a smooth audio cross-fade between nucleus 54 and coda 56, that provides a natural-sounding decay of the syllable sound, in a manner similar to the way in which a human voice might sound under the same
• the cross-fade loop 58 has two defined positions, start header 60 and end header 62.
• Figure 2 illustrates how a verbal audio event is produced in the present invention, in this example, the one-syllable word "cat".
• switch 18 activates the first syllable segment, onset 38, the sound "caaa”.
• onset 38 is followed smoothly by the second syllable segment, nucleus 42 of rhyme 40, which is looped and oscillates between loop-start header 46 and loop-end header 48, allowing the vowel sound "....aaaaaa." for as long as mouth 15 remains open.
• switch 18 deactivates the loop-end header 48 of nucleus 42, allowing the third syllable segment, coda 44, the sound "t", to smoothly follow and end the syllable in a complete and natural manner.
• switch 18 deactivates the loop-end header 48 of nucleus 42, allowing the third syllable segment, coda 44, the sound "t", to smoothly follow and end the syllable in a complete and natural manner.
• a sequence of verbal audio events for the phrase "Mary had a little lamb” is illustrated in the example below and also in Figure 4. Li the example, transitions between the segments of the syllables are indicated by a slash "/”, so the complete sequence of the audio events is in the form "xxx/yyyyyy/zzz.”
• Program selection switch 32 which is mounted to head 12, enables the user to select which sequence of verbal audio events he or she would like to hear.
• the user can use program selection switch 32 to select the key in which the song is sung, and may also select an optional sequence for second or third part harmony of the same song.
• chromatic pitch-shifting switch 50 may be added to the sound producing unit 20, to select these options.
• the toy can take on a variety of voices.
• the voices can be animal, fantasy, or human, male or female, young or old, and could also have accents or other characteristics.
• Toy 10 also provides great versatility, in that country specific verbal audio events can be stored in memory 24, such as audio events in the Japanese language for use of the invention in Japan, or audio events in the Spanish language for use in many Latin American countries.
• sound-producing unit 20 includes a sound chip with multiple polyphony, thereby enabling the use of a musical instrumental sequenced performance (i.e., strummed guitar chords, sustained piano chords, or
• the instrumental performances can be generated from a General MIDI PCM or FM sound-bank/digital- audio-engine.
• the toys could be used to sing together either in unison or in multiple part harmony, providing yet another entertaining experience for the user(s).
• Memory 24 could be manufactured so that it can be removed as a package from the toy 10 and replaced with a new memory that would contain prerecorded audio events that are different from those stored on the removed unit. This way, a user would always be able to have new audio events and would not easily get tired of using the toy.
• the types of prerecorded verbal audio events that in sequence produce verbal performances are almost unlimited. I envision prerecorded performances such as vocal effects, educational songs, nursery rhymes, holiday songs, popular songs, animal voices, spoken words, prayers, poems, or robotic speech, among others.
• a novelty item such as a greeting card could be configured to synchronize verbal audio events in a sound-producing unit mounted to the card.
• the front and back parts of the greeting card function in the same manner as do the movable jaw members of the toy.
• a switch activates the sound producing, which initiates a verbal audio event, which can be sustained while the card is opened and smoothly ends with a natural decay as the parts of the card are closed together.

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• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Acoustics & Sound (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Toys (AREA)

Priority Applications (4)

Applications Claiming Priority (1)

Publications (1)

Family

ID=38092545

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (4)

Cited By (2)

Families Citing this family (2)

Citations (4)

Family Cites Families (9)

• 2005
  • 2005-12-02 WO PCT/US2005/043786 patent/WO2007064333A1/en active Application Filing
  • 2005-12-02 EP EP05852871A patent/EP1962981A4/en not_active Withdrawn
  • 2005-12-02 JP JP2008543257A patent/JP2009517717A/ja active Pending
  • 2005-12-02 CN CN2005800522000A patent/CN101321566B/zh not_active Expired - Fee Related

Patent Citations (4)

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