Patent ID: 11961534
Assignee: NEC CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 12:
13. A control method of a voice operation apparatus, the control method comprising:
performing voice recognition on voice information of a person who is speaking at a current time into which voice vibration has been converted by each of a plurality of microphones of a microphone array;
acquiring registered user information stored in a storage medium and in which:
first user information registers a direction of an expected location of a first user and with a first time period in which the first user is expected to be speaking; and
second user information registers a direction of an expected location of a second user and with a second time period in which the second user is expected to be speaking;
estimating an arrival direction of the voice vibration as detected by the array microphone; and
identifying that the person who is speaking at the current time is the first user in response to the current time matching the first time period and the arrival direction matching the direction of the expected location of the first user based on the first user information and the estimated arrival direction; and
identifying that the person who is speaking at the current time is the second user in response to the current time matching the second time period and the arrival direction matching the direction of the expected location of the second user based on the second user information and the estimated arrival direction.