Granted Patent B2

US 8,243,902 · App. 11/904,955 · Granted Aug 14, 2012

Abstract

Claims (38)

1. A method comprising:

providing a communication system comprising a plurality of microphones, an identification unit, at least one graphical interface, and a positioning unit, the microphones comprising a first microphone, a second microphone and a third microphone;

the identification unit receiving electronic business card data;

the identification unit receiving a first input received by the first microphone;

the identification unit identifying a speaker providing the first input;

the positioning unit detecting the first microphone receiving of the first input;

the positioning unit determining how much time elapses between the first microphone receiving the first input and the second microphone receiving the first input to determine a position of the speaker;

the positioning unit determining how much time elapses between the first microphone receiving the first input and the third microphone receiving the first input to determine the position of the speaker;

the at least one graphical interface displaying the position of the speaker via a displayed map of a conference room, the displayed map of the conference room having participant indicia identifying conference participant positions adjacent indicia identifying the position of the speaker, the at least one graphical interface displaying the position of the speaker based on the determined position of the speaker made by the positioning unit;

the at least one graphical interface also displaying information about the speaker, the information about the speaker being based on information from the electronic business card data;

wherein at least a portion of the information about the speaker is spaced apart from the displayed map of the conference room; and

wherein the participant indicia identifying conference participant positions comprises images representing different participants positioned around an image representing a conference table of the conference room and wherein the display of information about the speaker is comprised of an image representing the speaker that is spaced apart from the displayed map.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1 , said electronic business card data comprising at least one of preprocessed voice recognition samples and digitized voice samples that are used by the identification unit to identify the speaker.

3. A method in accordance with claim 1 , further comprising updating presence contexts for the speaker for confirming the identity of the speaker.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1 , wherein said receiving of said electronic business card data uses a Bluetooth protocol.

5. A telecommunications system, comprising:

a network;

a plurality of microphones comprising a first microphone, a second microphone, and a third microphone;

a conference control unit operably coupled to the network and configured to poll a plurality of user devices for audio electronic business card data and receive said data from said plurality of user devices and identify participants to a conference based on said audio electronic business card data; and

a conference mapping unit identifying locations of participants responsive to their speaking and displaying a map of said locations of the participants;

said identifying locations of each of said participants occurring by the first microphone receiving voice input from the participant and wherein a first amount of time it takes for the voice input to be received by the second microphone and a second amount of time it takes for the voice input to be received by the third microphone is determined such that the location of the participant is determined for identifying on the map;

wherein said conference control unit is communicatively connected to at least one graphical interface such that the at least one graphical interface displays the map, the map being a representation of a conference room having participant indicia identifying the determined locations of the participants adjacent indicia identifying which of the participants is currently speaking; and

wherein said conference control unit is communicatively connected to the at least one graphical interface such that information about the currently speaking participant is displayed and at least a portion of the information about the currently speaking participant is displayed spaced apart from the displayed map, the information about the currently speaking participant being based on information from the received audio electronic business card data.

6. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 5 wherein said audio electronic business card data includes one or more speech samples, and wherein said conference control unit is configured to perform an identification by comparing said one or more speech samples to conference speaker voices.

7. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 6 , wherein said audio electronic business card data includes preprocessed voice recognition data, and wherein said conference control unit is configured to perform an identification by comparing said preprocessed voice recognition data to data derived from conference speaker voices.

8. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 6 , further comprising a presence control unit, the presence control unit configured to update a presence status of a participant based on an identification from the audio electronic business card data.

9. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 6 , wherein said conference mapping unit performs an acoustic triangulation to determine the location of each of the participants.

10. A telecommunications method, comprising:

receiving audio electronic business card data at a conference control unit;

identifying conference participants from the audio electronic business card data and speech data of conference participants;

determining locations of the conference participants responsive to detecting individual speech and said identifying of conference participants and performing an acoustic triangulation based on speech input provided by each of the conference participants, for each conference participant, the speech input being provided to a first microphone, second microphone and third microphone and the acoustic triangulation utilizing a first time difference between when the speech input was received by the first microphone as compared with when the speech input was received by the second microphone and a second time difference between when the speech input was received by the first microphone as compared with when the speech input was received by the third microphone to determine the location of the conference participant;

at least one graphical interface displaying a map, the map having indicia identifying the determined locations of each conference participant located in a conference room and also having indicia identifying which of the conference participants is currently speaking;

the at least one graphical interface also displaying information about the currently speaking participant, the information about the currently speaking participant being based on information from the electronic business card data;

wherein at least a portion of the information about the currently speaking participant is spaced apart from the displayed map of the conference room; and

wherein the participant indicia identifying conference participant positions comprises images representing different participants positioned around an image representing a conference table of the conference room and wherein the display of information about the currently speaking participant is comprised of an image representing the currently speaking participant that is spaced apart from the displayed map.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said identifying conference participants comprises comparing said speech data with one or more speech samples on said audio electronic business card data.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein said identifying conference participants comprises comparing data derived from said speech data with preprocessed voice recognition data on said audio electronic business card data.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising updating a presence status of a conference participant based on an identification from the audio electronic business card data.

Assignments (12)