Patent Publication Number: US-9899039-B2

Title: Method for determining alcohol consumption, and recording medium and terminal for carrying out same

Description:
TECHNICAL FIELD 
     The present invention relates to a method of determining whether alcohol has been consumed using a voice analysis, and a recording medium and terminal for carrying out the same. 
     BACKGROUND ART 
     Although there may be differences among individuals, a drunk driving accident is likely to happen when a driver is half-drunk or drunk. As methods of measuring drunkenness, there is a method of measuring the concentration of alcohol within exhaled air during respiration using a breathalyzer equipped with an alcohol sensor and a method of measuring the concentration of alcohol in the blood flow using a laser. Generally, the former method is usually used for cracking down on drunk driving. In this case, when any driver refuses a drunkenness test, the Widmark Equation may be used to estimate a blood alcohol concentration by collecting the blood of the driver with his or her consent. 
     A technology for determining whether a driver has consumed alcohol and controlled starting device for a vehicle in order to prevent drunk driving is commercialized. Some vehicles to which the technology is applied are already commercially available. Such a technology works by enabling or disabling a vehicle to be started by attaching a detection device equipped with an alcohol sensor to the starting device of the vehicle, this is a field in which much research is being conducted by domestic and foreign automotive manufacturers. These methods use an alcohol sensor and thus may relatively accurately measure a concentration of alcohol. However, in an environment with high humidity and dust, such as an automotive interior environment, the alcohol sensor has a low accuracy and is not entirely usable due to frequent failures. Furthermore, the sensor has a short lifetime. Accordingly, when the sensor is combined to an electronic device, there is an inconvenience of having to repair the electronic device in order to replace the sensor. 
     DISCLOSURE 
     Technical Problem 
     An aspect of the present invention is directed to a method of determining whether a person is drunk after consuming alcohol by analyzing a formant slope of a voice signal, and a recording medium and a terminal for carrying out the same. 
     Technical Solution 
     According to an aspect of the present invention, an alcohol consumption determination method includes receiving a voice signal and converting the received voice signal into a plurality of voice frames, extracting a voice frame corresponding to a voiced sound among the plurality of voice frames, extracting a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound, extracting a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies, and determining whether alcohol has been consumed according to the formant slope. 
     The extracting of a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound may include extracting first to fourth formant frequencies of the voice frame. 
     The extracting of a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies may include extracting a formant slope between the first formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency or extracting a formant slope between the second formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency. 
     The determining of whether alcohol has been consumed according to the formant slope may include counting the number of voice frames each having a formant slope less than a predetermined threshold, calculating a ratio of the counted number of voice frames to the total number of voice frames, and determining that alcohol has been consumed when the calculated ratio is greater than a predetermined value. 
     According to an embodiment of the present invention, a computer-readable recording medium has a program recorded thereon for performing the above-described alcohol consumption determination method. 
     According to an embodiment of the present invention, an alcohol consumption determination terminal includes a voice input unit configured to receive a voice signal and generate a voice frame; a voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit configured to receive the voice frame and determine whether the voice frame corresponds to a voiced sound; a formant frequency extraction unit configured to extract a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound; and an alcohol consumption determination unit configured to generate formant slopes between the plurality of formant frequencies and determine whether alcohol has been consumed according to the formant slopes. 
     The alcohol consumption determination unit may include a counting unit configured to compare a formant slope of the voice frame determined as the voiced sound in the entire section of the voice signal with a pre-stored threshold and count the number of voice frames each having a formant slope smaller than the threshold. 
     The alcohol consumption determination unit may further include a ratio calculation unit configured to compare a result calculated by the counting unit with the total number of voice frames to calculate a ratio therebetween. 
     The alcohol consumption determination unit may further include a determination unit configured to determine that alcohol has been consumed when the ratio calculated by the ratio calculation unit is greater than a predetermined value. 
     When the formant slopes between the plurality of formant frequencies are generated, the alcohol consumption determination unit may generate any one of a formant slope between the first formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency among the formant frequencies and a formant slope between the second formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency among the formant frequencies. 
     Advantageous Effects 
     As described above, according to an aspect of the present invention, whether alcohol has been consumed may be determined by analyzing a formant slope of an input voice signal. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a control block diagram of an alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 2  is a view for describing a concept in which voice signals are converted into voice frames by a voice input unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 3  is a control block diagram of a voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  is a graph showing a formant frequency extracted by a format frequency extraction unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  is a graph for describing an operation of a formant slope extraction unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 6  is a control block diagram of an alcohol consumption determination unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 7  is a view illustrating a slope between a first formant frequency and a fourth formant frequency in order to describe an operation of an alcohol consumption determination unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 8  is a control flowchart showing an alcohol consumption determination method according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     MODES FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION 
     Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In adding reference numbers for elements in each figure, it should be noted that like reference numbers already used to denote like elements in other figures are used for elements wherever possible. 
       FIG. 1  is a control block diagram of an alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     An alcohol consumption determination terminal  100  may include a voice input unit  110 , a voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120 , a formant frequency extraction unit  130 , a formant slope extraction unit  140 , and an alcohol consumption determination unit  150 . 
     The voice input unit  110  may receive a person&#39;s voice, convert the received voice into voice data, convert the voice data into voice frame data in units of frames, and output the voice frame data. The voice input unit  110  may convert voice signals in the frequency domain using a transform method such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). 
     The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may receive a voice frame, extract predetermined features from the voice frame, and analyze whether the voice frame is associated with a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or noise according to the extracted features. 
     The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may determine whether the voice frame corresponds to a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise according to a recognition result obtained by the above method. The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may separate and output the voice frame as a voice sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise according to a result of the determination. 
     The formant frequency extraction unit  130  may extract a formant frequency for a voice frame determined as a voice sound through the voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120 . The formant frequency is a frequency band peak to which sound energy is concentrated in a spectrogram of an input voice signal. The frequency band with a formant refers to sound energy with relatively high intensity. Accordingly, consonants have no formant frequencies, and only vowels have formant frequencies. The formant frequencies are called F 1 , F 2 , F 3 , F 4 , and F 5  in ascending order of harmonics in a frequency intensity distribution. Typically, for a male adult, about five formant frequencies occur in a range up to 5000 Hz. For a female adult, about four formant frequencies occur (that is, one less than the number of formant frequencies for a male adult). 
     The formant slope extraction unit  140  finds a formant slope using the formant frequencies extracted by the formant frequency extraction unit  130 . The formant slope is a slope of a straight line connecting one formant frequency and another. For example, a slope of a straight line connecting a first formant frequency F 1  and a fourth formant frequency F 4  may be defined as a formant slope F 14 . 
     The alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may determine whether alcohol has been consumed using the formant slope. The frequency after drinking is characterized in that a drunk person cannot speak quickly and thus pronunciation accuracy is reduced. This phenomenon causes a spectrum in the frequency domain to be smoothed. This means that a formant curve with a gentle slope can be obtained in the frequency domain. Thus, the alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may compare the formant slope of the voice frame determined as the voiced sound with a threshold. The alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may determine that alcohol has been consumed when a ratio of the number of voice frames that are determined as having formant slopes smaller than the threshold to the total number of voice frames is greater than or equal to a certain value. 
       FIG. 2  is a view for describing a concept in which voice signals are converted into voice frames by a voice input unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     Typically, analog voice signals are sampled at a rate of 8000 per second and in the size of 16 bits (65535 steps) and converted into voice data. 
     The voice input unit  110  may convert received voice signals into voice data and convert the voice data into voice frame data in units of frames. Here, one piece of the voice frame data has 256 energy values. 
     As shown in  FIG. 2 , the voice data is composed of a plurality of voice frames (n=the number of frames, n=1, 2, 3, . . . ) according to an input voice. 
     The voice input unit  110  generates a voice frame and then sends information regarding the voice frame to the voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120 . 
       FIG. 3  is a control block diagram of a voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may include a feature extraction unit  121  configured to receive a voice frame and extract predetermined features from the voice frame, a recognition unit  122  configured to yield a recognition result for the voice frame, a determination unit  123  configured to determine whether the received voice frame is associated with a voiced sound or an unvoiced sound or whether the received voice frame is caused by background noise, and a separation and output unit  124  configured to separate and output the voice frame according to a result of the determination. 
     When the voice frame is received through the voice input unit  110 , the feature extraction unit  121  may extract features such as periodic characteristics of harmonics or root mean square energy (RMSE) or zero-crossing count (ZC) of a low-band voice signal energy area from the received voice frame. 
     Generally, the recognition unit  122  may be composed of a neural network. This is because the neural network is useful in analyzing non-linear problems, that is, complicated problems that cannot be solved mathematically and thus is suitable for analyzing voice signals and determining whether a corresponding voice signal is determined as a voiced signal, an unvoiced signal, or background noise according to a result of the analysis. The recognition unit  122 , which is composed of such a neural network, may assign predetermined weights to the features extracted from the feature extraction unit  121  and may yield a recognition result for the voice frame through a calculation process of the neural network. Here, the recognition result refers to a value that is obtained by calculating calculation elements according to weights assigned to features of each voice frame. 
     The determination unit  123  may determine whether the received voice signal corresponds to a voiced sound or an unvoiced sound according to the above-described recognition result, that is, the value calculated by the recognition unit  122 . The separation and output unit  124  may separate and output the voice frame as a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise according to a result of the determination of the determination unit  123 . 
     Meanwhile, since a voiced sound is distinctly different from a voiced sound and background noise in terms of various features, it is relatively easy to identify the voiced sound, and there are several well-known techniques for this. For example, the voiced sound has periodic characteristics in which harmonics are repeated at a certain interval while the background noise does not have the harmonics. On the other hand, the unvoiced sound has harmonics with weak periodicity. In other words, the voiced sound is characterized in that the harmonics are repeated within one frame while the unvoiced sound is characterized in that the characteristics of the voiced sound such as the harmonics are repeated every certain number of frames, that is, is shown to be weak. 
       FIG. 4  is a graph showing a formant frequency extracted by a format frequency extraction unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     There are several methods for finding the formant frequency. Among the several methods, a method using an LPC cepstrum will be described below. However, it will be appreciated that all well-known methods are included in the present invention. 
     The formant frequency extraction may take a hamming window such that in order to minimize discontinuity of an input signal in order to find the LPC cepstrum. 
                         X   w     ⁡     (   n   )       =       x   ⁡     (   n   )       ⁢     w   ⁡     (   n   )       ⁢       ,       w   ⁡     (   n   )       =     0.54   -     0.46   ⁢           ⁢     cos   ⁡     (       2   ⁢   π   ⁢           ⁢   n       N   -   1       )             ,     
     ⁢     0   ≤     N   -   1               [     Equation   ⁢           ⁢   1     ]               
where N is the number of samples, and x(n) is an input signal. An AR coefficient is found by applying an autocorrelation method to the signal that takes the window, as in Equation 2. Here, p is the order.
 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
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       FIG. 4  shows an amplitude spectrum and an LPC spectrum of the pronunciation of “Ah” using the above methods performed by the formant frequency extraction unit  130 . Here, the thick line shows the LPC spectrum, and F 1 , F 2 , F 3 , F 4 , and F 5  are found by finding peaks in the LPC spectrum, starting from the lowest frequency. 
       FIG. 5  is a graph for describing an operation of a formant slope extraction unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     The formant slope extraction unit  140  may extract a formant slope using the formant frequencies extracted by the formant frequency extraction unit  130 . 
     Referring to  FIG. 5 , the formant slope extraction unit  140  may extract a slope {circle around (1)} between the first formant frequency F 1  and the fourth formant frequency F 4 , a slope {circle around (2)} between the first formant frequency F 1  and the third formant frequency F 3 , and a slope {circle around (3)} between the first formant frequency F 1  and the second formant frequency F 2 . Here, among the plurality of formant slopes, F 14  and F 24  are more useful in determining whether alcohol has been consumed. A person&#39;s ability to control the volume of voice is reduced due to a change in the body after drinking. Thus, since the person cannot talk smoothly and rhythmically by using a change in energy, the person makes consecutive pronunciations with a loud voice or makes pronunciations with a loud voice even when the pronunciation should be made with a low voice. The feature denotes that a change occurs in the first formant F 1 . Furthermore, tongue position is changed upon pronunciation when alcohol has been consumed. This affects the second formant F 2 . That is, the second formant increases when the tongue is positioned forward and decreases when the tongue is positioned backward. The fourth formant F 4  is not affected by an articulator, and thus is almost constant before and after drinking. Accordingly, whether alcohol has been consumed may be more easily determined according to the variations of F 14  and F 24 . 
       FIG. 6  is a control block diagram of an alcohol consumption determination unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention, and  FIG. 7  is a view illustrating a slope between a first formant frequency and a fourth formant frequency in order to describe an operation of an alcohol consumption determination unit included in the alcohol consumption determination terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     An alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may include a counting unit  151 , a ratio calculation unit  152 , a determination unit  153 , and a storage unit  154 . 
     The counting unit  151  compares, with a pre-stored threshold, a formant slope of a voice frame determined as a voiced sound in the entire section of a voice signal and counts the number of voice frames each having a formant slope smaller than the threshold. 
     Referring to  FIG. 7 , the formant slope extraction unit  140  extracts a slope between the first formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency of the voice frame. The formant slope refers to a ratio between the base a and the height b of a triangle having a hypotenuse that is a line connecting the first formant frequency and the forth formant frequency, as shown in Equation 5 below: 
                     F   ⁢           ⁢   14     =     b   a             [     Equation   ⁢           ⁢   5     ]               
where a is a variation of frequency, and b is a variation of energy.
 
     The ratio calculation unit  152  compares a result calculated by the counting unit  151  with the total number of voice frames (the total number of voice frames determined as voiced sounds) to calculate a ratio of the two. The ratio calculation unit  152  may calculate the ratio using Equation 6 below: 
                   Rate   =     C   T             [     Equation   ⁢           ⁢   6     ]               
where C is the counted number, and T is the total number of voice frames (the total number of voice frames determined as voiced sounds).
 
     When the ratio calculated by the ratio calculation unit  152  is greater than a value that is pre-stored in the storage unit  154 , the determination unit  153  determines that alcohol has been consumed. 
       FIG. 8  is a control flowchart showing an alcohol consumption determination method according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     The voice input unit  110  may receive a person&#39;s voice, convert the received voice into voice data, convert the voice data into voice frames in units of frames, and output the voice frames. The voice input unit  110  may convert voice signals into the frequency domain using a transform method such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) ( 200  and  210 ). 
     The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may receive a voice frame, extract predetermined features from the voice frame, and analyze whether the voice frame is associated with a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise according to the extracted features ( 220 ). 
     The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may determine whether the voice frame corresponds to a voiced sound or an unvoiced sound according to a recognition result obtained by the above method. The voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120  may extract and output the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound according to a result of the determination ( 230 ). 
     The formant frequency extraction unit  130  may extract formant frequencies for the voice frame determined as the voice sound through the voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit  120 . The formant frequencies are called F 1 , F 2 , F 3 , F 4 , and F 5  in ascending order of harmonics in a frequency intensity distribution ( 240 ). 
     The formant slope extraction unit  140  finds a formant slope using the formant frequencies extracted by the formant frequency extraction unit  130 . The formant slope is a slope of a straight line connecting one formant frequency and another. For example, a slope of a straight line connecting a first formant frequency F 1  and a fourth formant frequency F 4  may be defined as a formant slope F 14  ( 250 ). 
     The alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may determine whether alcohol has been consumed using the formant slope. The alcohol consumption determination unit  150  may compare the formant slope of the voice frame determined as the voiced sound with a threshold and may determine that alcohol has been consumed when a ratio of the number of voice frames that are determined as having formant slopes smaller than the threshold to the total number of voice frames (the total number of voice frames determined as voiced sounds) is greater than or equal to a certain value ( 260 ,  270 ,  280 , and  290 ). 
     Although the present invention has been described with reference to exemplary embodiments thereof, it should be understood that numerous other modifications and variations can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention by those skilled in the art. It is obvious that the modifications and variations fall within the spirit and scope thereof.