Patent ID: 9729994
Date: 2017-08-08
CPC Classifications: G01S,G06F,G10K,H04R,H04S

Claim:
1. A method to provide assistive listening for a plurality of listeners in an environment comprising a plurality of acoustics sources, the method comprising: receiving, at one or more microphone arrays located in an environment, an acoustic signal from each of a plurality of acoustic sources located in the environment, wherein one or more of the plurality of acoustic sources are mobile acoustic sources; transmitting the acoustic signal received from each of the plurality of acoustic sources located in the environment to an acoustic beam forming processor; determining, at the acoustic beamforming processor, a location of each of the plurality of acoustic sources in the environment; transmitting, from the acoustic beamforming processor, the location of each of the plurality of acoustic sources in the environment to one or more listener-controlled interface devices located in the environment, wherein each of the one or more listener-controlled interface devices are located distant from the acoustic beamforming processor; displaying the location of each of the plurality of acoustic sources in the environment on the one or more listener-controlled interface devices; selecting a target location of a mobile acoustic source from the locations displayed on the one or more listener-controlled interface devices; processing, at the acoustic beamforming processor, the acoustic signals from each of the plurality of acoustic sources to generate a steered beam pattern focused at the target location of the mobile acoustic source selected on each of the one or more listener-controlled interface devices; transmitting, from the acoustic beamforming processor, the steered beam pattern to one or more of the listener-controlled interface devices based upon the target location of the mobile acoustic source selected on the listener-controlled interface device; tracking, at the acoustic beamforming device, the movement of the target location of the mobile acoustic source using a an acoustic tracking algorithm; and adjusting, at the acoustic beamforming device, the steered beam pattern based upon the movement of the target location of the mobile acoustic source.