System and method for engaging a person in the presence of ambient audio
A computerized method for engaging a user of a mobile computer system. The mobile computer system may be connectible to a server over a wide area network. An audio signal of ambient audio is autonomously sampled in the vicinity of the mobile computer system to capture one or more audio samples of the audio signal. The multiple samples of the audio signal are autonomously sampled without requiring any interaction from the user, thus avoiding an input from the user to capture each of the samples. The audio sample may be processed to extract an audio signature of the audio sample. The audio signature may be compared with multiple previously stored reference audio signatures. Upon matching the audio signature with at least one reference audio signature a matched reference audio signature may be produced.
1. A mobile device, comprising:
a microphone;
a memory configured to store instructions; and
at least one processor in communication with the microphone and configured to execute the instructions to cause the mobile device to:
autonomously sample a first audio signal of ambient audio in a vicinity of a first device, the sampling including capturing a first audio signal sample without input from a user of the mobile device, and the first audio signal sample being associated with a first time stamp;
receive, from a server, audio data associated with a trigger event and a second time stamp associated with the trigger event, the audio data being sampled by a second device;
determine whether the first time stamp falls within a predetermined time interval that includes the second time stamp;
compare, when the first time stamp falls within the predetermined time interval, a first audio signature representative of the first audio signal sample with a second audio signature corresponding to the received audio data; and
transmit first information indicative of the determined correspondence between the first and second audio signatures to the server.
2. The mobile device of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further executed by the at least one processor to transmit, to the server, the first audio signal sample when the first time stamp falls within the predetermined time interval.
3. The mobile device of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further executed by the at least one processor to perform an action to engage the user when the first audio signature matches the second audio signature.
4. The mobile device of claim 3 , wherein performing the action to engage the user includes presenting to the user at least one data object selected from the group consisting of: a universal resource locator (URL), a Web page, an active link to a Web page, a text message, a video message, an audio message, a multimedia message, an active link to a social network account, a message to or from a social network account, an advertisement, an interactive menu, an alarm, a call to the mobile device, a call to another device, and a vibration of the mobile device.
5. The mobile device of claim 4 , wherein the instructions are further executed by the at least one processor to receive the at least one data object from the server.
6. The mobile device of claim 1 , wherein autonomously sampling includes periodically capturing a predetermined number of audio samples over a predetermined period of time, and the predetermined number of captured audio samples includes at least the first audio signal sample.
7. The mobile device of claim 1 , wherein the microphone is configured to determine an ambient audio level, and wherein autonomously sampling includes capturing the first audio signal sample if the ambient audio level exceeds a threshold.
8. The mobile device of claim 7 , wherein:
the microphone is further configured to determine an ambient noise level; and
the instructions are further executed by the at least one processor to adjust the threshold based on the determined ambient noise level.