Patent ID: 11900920
Assignee: PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CORPORATION OF AMERICA
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 10:
11. A sound pickup method performed by a computer, the sound pickup method comprising:
correcting a difference in sensitivity among a plurality of microphone elements by multiplying an output signal of each of the plurality of microphone elements by a gain;
detecting a voice of a speaker as a target sound;
controlling the gain based on a result of detecting the target sound; and
picking up the target sound in a boosted manner using the output signal of each of the plurality of microphone elements that is corrected, the target sound coming along a predetermined direction,
wherein the controlling the gain is performed such that the gain is updated based on the output signal of each of the plurality of microphone elements when the voice of the speaker is detected, and the gain is not updated when the voice of the speaker is not detected,
the correcting the difference in sensitivity is performed such that the output signal is multiplied, when the gain is updated, by the updated gain to correct the difference in sensitivity among the microphone elements, and the output signal is multiplied, when the gain is not updated, by the gain having been updated at the detection of the voice of the speaker to correct the difference in sensitivity among the microphone elements, and
the detecting the target sound is configured to:
determine whether an output signal from one microphone element among the plurality of microphone elements is the voice or a non-voice that is not the voice,
determine whether a direction along which the target sound comes is a predetermined target sound direction along which the target sound enters the microphone elements, using the output signal of each of the plurality of microphone elements, the predetermined target sound direction being previously stored in a storage, and
determine that the target sound is detected when the direction along which the target sound comes is determined to be the predetermined target sound direction that is previously stored, and the output signal from the one microphone element is determined to be the voice.