Patent ID: 7117157

Claim:
An apparatus for processing image data and sound data, comprising: an image processor operable to process image data recorded by at least one camera showing the movements of a plurality of people to track a respective position of each person in three dimensions; an input unit for inputting voice recognition parameters for each person; a data store to store data assigning a unique identity to each person tracked by said image processor and to store respective voice recognition parameters for each person; a sound processor operable to process sound data to determine the direction of arrival of sound; a speaker identifier operable to determine the unique identity of the person who is speaking by comparing the positions of the people determined by said image processor and the direction of arrival of the sound determined by said sound processor to identify a person at a position in the direction from which the sound arrives; a voice recognition parameter selector operable to select the voice recognition parameters from said data store of the person identified by said speaker identifier to be the person who is speaking; and a voice recognition processor operable to process the received sound data to generate text data therefrom using the voice recognition parameters selected by said voice recognition parameter selector.