Integrated design for omni-directional camera and microphone array
US7852369B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 27, 2002 |
| Grant date | Dec 14, 2010 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 21, 2024 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04R2201/401
- WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An omni-directional camera (a 360 degree camera) is proposed with an integrated microphone array. The primary application for such a camera is videoconferencing and meeting recording, and the device is designed to be placed on a meeting room table. The microphone array is in a planar configuration, and the microphones are located as close to the desktop as possible to eliminate sound reflections from the table. The camera is connected to the microphone array base with a thin cylindrical rod, which is acoustically invisible to the microphone array for the frequency range [50-4000] Hz. This provides a direct path from the person talking to all of the microphones in the array, and can therefore be used for sound source localization (determining the location of the talker) and beam-forming (improving the sound quality of the talker by filtering only sound from a particular direction). The camera array is elevated from the table to provide a near frontal viewpoint of the meeting participants.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.