Patent ID: 9264806
Filing Date: 2016-02-16
CPC Classification: G01S,H04R

Claim Text:
1. An apparatus for tracking locations of a plurality of sound sources, the apparatus comprising: a microphone array comprising a plurality of linearly disposed microphones; and a sound source candidate extractor, comprising a processor, to extract sound source candidates at respective predetermined frames from microphone signals received from the microphone array; and a sound source candidate verifier to perform beamforminq on the sound source candidates extracted by the sound source candidate extractor, to select the plurality of sound source candidates having a predetermined value or higher of signal intensity from the sound source candidates obtained as a result of the beamforminq and to predict locations of actual sound sources based on the selected sound source candidates, wherein the sound source candidate extractor comprises: a sound source feature extractor to extract voice features required for tracking locations of sound sources at respective frames from microphone signals received from the microphone array; and a sound source candidate group extractor to extract the sound source candidates, based on the sound source features extracted by the sound source feature extractor, and to extract a plurality of sound source candidate groups, each including sound source candidates having the same sound source direction, from the extracted sound source candidates.