JP2008227775A - Communication terminal device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve a problem that voice is not clearly catched since there is a possibility that a left microphone is hidden in a back of a mouse, if a user uses a communication terminal device such the mobile phone set, etc. holding it on a left ear in a case that, for example, a left microphone is made a sound collecting microphone, because the communication terminal device such the mobile phone set, etc. performs speaking using a microphone decided beforehand when conversation is performed using it which mounts stereophonic microphones. <P>SOLUTION: The communication terminal device with a plurality of microphones is composed to be provided with a detection means which detects the tilt of the communication terminal device, and a selection means which selects a voice signal based on a voice collected by any one microphone out of a plurality of microphones based on the tilt of the communication terminal device detected by the detection means. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a communication terminal device equipped with a stereo microphone.

  In recent years, some communication terminal devices such as mobile phones are equipped with recording functions such as a video recording function and a voice recorder function. Many recording functions have been recorded in monaural in the past, but some have a function of recording in stereo in order to improve the sound quality of recording and to improve the sense of reality during playback. When recording in stereo, microphones are provided at two locations on the left and right of the main body.

  However, even if you have a function to record in stereo, for example, when using it for recording such as conferences and interviews, there is a need to record for a long time, although there is no need to record with high sound quality, While having a function of recording in stereo, a function of recording in monaural is also required.

Therefore, even if two microphones are provided and stereo recording is possible, monaural recording is enabled by setting one microphone to collect sound in advance.
JP 2006-33615 A

  In a communication terminal device such as a cellular phone, even if it has two microphones and has a stereo recording function, it is processed as monaural when transmitting voice, so there is no need to collect in stereo. You only need to collect monaural sound.

  Normally, two microphones are provided at positions left and right of the communication terminal device. However, if one microphone that collects monaural sound is set in advance as in Patent Document 1, either the left or right communication terminal device such as a mobile phone is set. There is a risk that it will be difficult to collect sound by hitting it. For example, when the right microphone is used as a sound collecting microphone and is applied to the right ear, the right microphone may be hidden behind the mouth. For this reason, there is a problem that the voice cannot be clearly captured.

  In order to solve the above problems, the present invention is a communication terminal device including a plurality of microphones, based on a detection unit that detects a tilt of the communication terminal device, and a tilt of the communication terminal device detected by the detection unit, Selecting means for selecting an audio signal based on the sound collected by any one of the plurality of microphones;

  When the user of the communication terminal device makes a call, the inclination of the communication terminal device is reversed when the call is placed on the user's right ear and when the call is placed on the user's left ear. Become. That is, the communication terminal device tilts clockwise when it is applied to the user's right ear and counterclockwise when it is applied to the left ear. Therefore, when the detection means detects this inclination, it can be estimated whether the communication terminal apparatus is applied to the left or right ear of the user.

  The selection means selects a microphone to be used for transmission based on the inclination of the communication terminal device detected by the detection means. Therefore, it is necessary to select a microphone in a position that can clearly capture the voice when the communication terminal device is applied to the user's right ear and when the communication terminal device is applied to the user's left ear. It can be carried out.

  Therefore, it is possible to avoid the difficulty of collecting the user's voice by the ears to which the communication terminal device is applied.

  The embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS.

[Embodiment 1]
In the first embodiment, an embodiment in which an acceleration sensor is used as a detecting means for detecting inclination will be described.

  FIG. 1 shows an example of the appearance of a mobile phone 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The mobile phone 1 is a foldable mobile phone in which an upper housing 2 and a lower housing 4 are connected by a hinge portion 3. FIG. 1A is a front view of an open style in which the mobile phone 1 is used. FIG. 1B is a view of the open style of the mobile phone 1 as viewed from the back.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the upper housing 2 includes a display 5, a speaker 6, and a camera device 9. The lower housing 4 includes a stereo microphone 8 and an operation unit 7. The stereo microphone 8 includes a left microphone 8a and a right microphone 8b. The operation unit 7 includes a key group such as a numeric keypad, a direction key, and an enter key.

  FIG. 2 shows a configuration diagram of the mobile phone 1 according to the first embodiment. The mobile phone 1 includes an operation unit 7, a display unit 5, a control unit 10, a communication unit 12, a storage unit 13, a voice control unit 15, and an acceleration sensor 14.

  The communication unit 12 includes an antenna 11. The communication unit 12 demodulates the received signal received from the antenna 11 into a received voice signal and a received data signal. Next, the communication unit 12 outputs the demodulated received voice signal to the voice control unit 15 and the received data signal to the control unit 10. The communication unit 12 has a function of modulating the transmission voice signal A / D converted by the voice control unit 15 and the transmission data signal provided from the control unit 10 and then outputting the modulated data from the antenna 11.

  The operation unit 7 has a function of receiving a user operation and transmitting the received operation content to the control unit 10. The operation unit 7 includes a group of keys such as a numeric keypad, an off-hook key, an on-hook key, and a direction key.

  The voice control unit 15 performs D / A conversion on the received voice signal output from the communication unit 12 and outputs it to the speaker, and a signal obtained by A / D converting the transmission voice signal acquired from the microphone 8. And a function of outputting to

  The display unit 5 has a function of displaying an image according to an instruction from the control unit 10 on a display. Specifically, the display unit 5 displays a standby screen, mail text, moving images, and the like. The display unit 5 is realized by an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) or the like.

  The storage unit 13 has a function of storing various data and programs necessary for the operation of the mobile phone. The storage unit 13 also has a function of storing music data, image data, and the like. The storage unit 13 includes a ROM (Read Only Memory) and a RAM (Random Access Memory). The storage unit 13 may include a small hard disk or a nonvolatile memory.

  The acceleration sensor 14 detects the tilt of the mobile phone 1 according to an instruction from the control unit 10. Detecting the tilt of the mobile phone 1 means detecting whether the acceleration sensor is tilted clockwise or counterclockwise when the open style of the mobile phone 1 is viewed from the front as shown in FIG.

  The acceleration sensor 14 has a function of measuring acceleration applied to an object. Gravitational acceleration due to gravity is always constant vertically downward. When the sensitive axis of the acceleration sensor 14 is tilted from the vertical direction, the gravitational acceleration with respect to the sensitive axis direction of the acceleration sensor 14 changes according to the tilted angle from the vertical direction. Therefore, the acceleration sensor 14 can detect how much the object is inclined with respect to the vertical direction by detecting the change in the gravitational acceleration.

  In the first embodiment, the acceleration sensor 14 detects whether the inclination of the mobile phone 1 is inclined clockwise or counterclockwise by using the function of detecting the inclination of the acceleration sensor 14 with respect to the vertical direction. The principle of the acceleration sensor includes a piezoelectric type, a semiconductor piezo type, and a capacitance type, and the number of sensitive axes of the acceleration sensor may be either two or three.

  The control unit 10 has a function of controlling each unit of the mobile phone 1. In the present invention, the control unit 10 includes a selection unit 16.

  Based on the inclination detected by the acceleration sensor 14, the selection unit 16 selects an audio signal used for transmission from audio signals based on sounds collected by the microphones 8 a and 8 b. When the inclination of the mobile phone 1 is clockwise, the selection unit 16 selects an audio signal based on the sound collected at 8a, and when the inclination is counterclockwise, the selection unit 16 selects an audio signal based on the sound collected at 8b. select.

  Next, the processing operation of the mobile phone 1 in the present embodiment will be described using the flowchart shown in FIG.

  The control unit 10 detects whether there is an off-hook through the operation unit 7 (S10). When detecting the off-hook, the control unit 10 detects whether it is an off-hook based on an incoming call or an off-hook based on an outgoing call (S11).

  When the detected off-hook is an off-hook based on an incoming call to the mobile phone 1, the control unit 10 tilts the mobile phone 1 clockwise with respect to the acceleration sensor 14 one second after detecting the off-hook (S 12). Or it is detected whether it is leaning counterclockwise (S14). In the first embodiment, a case is described in which the control unit 10 causes the acceleration sensor 14 to detect one second after detecting an off-hook, but it is not necessarily limited to one second and may be any number of seconds.

  When the detected off-hook is an off-hook based on an outgoing call from the mobile phone 1, the control unit 10 receives a response from the other party (S13), and the tilt of the mobile phone 1 is clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to the acceleration sensor 14. It is made to detect whether it is leaning around (S14).

  The acceleration sensor 14 may detect the inclination of the mobile phone 1 and output the detected result when instructed by the control unit 10. The acceleration sensor 14 always detects the inclination of the mobile phone 10 regardless of the instruction from the control unit 10, and outputs the detection result of the inclination of the mobile phone 1 when there is an instruction from the control unit 10. Also good.

  Based on the inclination of the mobile phone 1 detected by the acceleration sensor 14, the control unit 10 causes the audio control unit 15 to transmit the audio signal based on the sound collected by the microphone 8a in the clockwise direction. A talk is performed (S15), and in the case of a counterclockwise direction, a voice signal based on the voice collected by the microphone 8b is used to transmit a voice (S16).

  With the above processing operation, it is possible to determine whether the user is talking to the left or right ear. Then, based on the determination result as to whether the user is talking to the left or right ear, the microphone to be used for transmission is selected. Therefore, since the mobile phone 1 does not use the microphone hidden behind the user's mouth at the time of transmission, the voice of the transmission can be supplemented clearly.

[Embodiment 2]
In the first embodiment, the embodiment using the acceleration sensor as the detecting means for detecting the inclination is shown. In this embodiment, an embodiment in which a camera device is used instead of an acceleration sensor will be described.

  The appearance of the mobile phone 1 in the present embodiment is the same as FIG. The configuration of the mobile phone 1 is shown in FIG. Only a configuration different from the first embodiment will be described.

  The camera device 9 is a CCD camera (Charge Coupled Device camera), a CMOS camera (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor camera), or the like, and has a function of capturing an image or a moving image.

  The control unit 10 includes a selection unit 16 and an image analysis unit 20.

  The image analysis unit 20 has a function of detecting the tilt of the mobile phone 1 by analyzing a moving image captured by the camera device 9. From a moving image captured by the camera device, a characteristic subject is cut out by image recognition to select a subject for tilt determination. The image analysis unit detects whether the subject selected by the camera device 9 has moved in the clockwise direction or the counterclockwise direction by determining in which direction the object moved compared with the position at the time of selection.

  Specifically, as shown in FIG. 6, in the state X at the start of shooting, when the subject selected by the camera device 9 is “A”, the case where the subject “A” moves in the direction of the state Y is turned clockwise. Is detected. When the subject “A” moves in the direction of state Z, it is detected as counterclockwise. The inclination may be detected by continuously capturing images and analyzing the subject of the continuously captured images. However, when a moving image captured by the camera device 9 is mirror-processed and displayed on the display unit 5, the subject “A” is detected as counterclockwise when the subject “A” moves in the direction of the state Y, and the subject “A”. Is moved in the direction of state Z, it is detected as clockwise.

  Next, the operation of the mobile phone 1 in the present embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG.

  The control unit 10 detects whether there is an off-hook through the operation unit 7 (S20). When detecting the off-hook, the control unit 10 causes the camera device 9 to capture a moving image (S21).

  The image analysis unit 20 analyzes the moving image captured by the camera device 9 (S22), and detects whether the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise or counterclockwise (S23).

  Based on the result of the inclination of the mobile phone 1 analyzed by the image analysis unit 20, the control unit 10 causes the audio control unit 15 to use an audio signal based on the sound collected by the microphone 8a in the clockwise direction. In the case of the counterclockwise direction, the speech is transmitted by using an audio signal based on the sound collected by the microphone 8b (S25).

  When the transmission is started, the control unit 10 causes the camera device 9 to finish capturing the moving image (S26).

  The above is the operation based on the second embodiment. With the above processing operation, the mobile phone 1 can obtain the same effects as those of the first embodiment.

[Embodiment 3]
As the detection means for detecting the tilt, the first embodiment shows an embodiment using an acceleration sensor, and the second embodiment shows an embodiment using a camera device. In the third embodiment, an embodiment in which audio signals are compared as means for detecting inclination will be described.

  The configuration of the mobile phone 1 in the third embodiment is shown in FIG. Only different configurations of the first embodiment and the second embodiment will be described.

The control unit 10 according to the third embodiment includes a selection unit 16 and a voice comparison unit 30.
The voice comparison unit 30 detects the tilt of the mobile phone 1 by comparing the transmitted voice signals based on the voice collected by the stereo microphone 8. Specifically, the voice comparison unit 30 compares the signal strengths of the transmitted voice signals based on the voices collected using the microphone 8a and the microphone 8b. The voice comparison unit 30 estimates that the signal having higher signal strength has less noise in the transmitted voice signal.

  When the user places the mobile phone 1 on the right ear, the microphone 8b is hidden behind the user's mouth because the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise. Therefore, it can be estimated that the sound signal collected by the microphone 8a has less noise than the sound signal collected by the microphone 8b. Conversely, when the user puts the mobile phone 1 on the left ear, it can be estimated that the sound signal collected by the microphone 8b has less noise. Thereby, by comparing the signal strength, it can be determined whether the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise or counterclockwise. The voice comparison unit 30 determines that the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise when the estimation result is the microphone 8a, and determines that the mobile phone 1 is tilted counterclockwise when the estimation result is the microphone 8b. To do. Other means for comparing audio signals include comparing the sound pressure of the audio signal, estimating that the maximum of the sound pressure is less noise in the audio signal, comparing the signal-to-noise ratio, There is a method of estimating that the noise signal has less noise when the noise-to-noise ratio is higher.

  Next, the operation of the mobile phone 1 in the present embodiment will be described using the flowchart shown in FIG.

  The control unit 10 detects whether there is an off-hook through the operation unit 7 (S30). When detecting the off-hook, the control unit 10 detects whether it is an off-hook based on an incoming call or an off-hook based on an outgoing call (S31).

  When the detected off-hook is an off-hook based on an incoming call to the mobile phone 1, the control unit 10 uses the microphone 8a and the microphone 8b for the voice control unit 15 one second after detecting the off-hook (S32). To instruct the voice to be collected (S34).

  In the third embodiment, the control unit 10 gives an instruction to the voice control unit 15 one second after detecting the off-hook, but the number is not necessarily limited to one second and may be any number of seconds.

  When the detected off-hook is an off-hook based on the outgoing call from the mobile phone 1, the control unit 10 receives a response from the other party (S33), and uses the microphone 8a and the microphone 8b for the voice control unit 15. An instruction is given to collect the sound (S34).

  The voice comparison unit 30 compares the signal strength of the voice signal based on the voice collected using the microphone 8a and the signal strength of the transmitted voice signal based on the voice collected using the microphone 8b (S35). It is detected whether the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise or counterclockwise (S36).

  The control unit 10 uses the audio signal based on the sound collected by the microphone 8a in the clockwise direction based on whether the mobile phone 1 is tilted clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to the audio control unit 15. The voice is transmitted (S37), and in the case of the counterclockwise direction, the voice is transmitted by using the voice signal based on the voice collected by the microphone 8b (S38).

  The above is the operation of the mobile phone 1 based on the third embodiment. With the above processing operation, the same effect as in the first embodiment can be obtained.

It is the figure which showed an example of the external appearance of a mobile telephone. 1A is a view of the open style of the mobile phone as viewed from the front. FIG. 1B is a view of the open style of the mobile phone as viewed from the back. 3 is a functional configuration diagram illustrating a functional configuration of a mobile phone according to Embodiment 1. FIG. It is the figure which showed the clockwise and counterclockwise inclination. 3 is a flowchart showing processing operations in the first embodiment. 6 is a functional block diagram illustrating a functional configuration of a mobile phone according to Embodiment 2. FIG. It is the figure which showed the example of clockwise detection or the counterclockwise detection based on a to-be-photographed object's motion. 10 is a flowchart showing processing operations in the second embodiment. 5 is a functional configuration diagram illustrating a functional configuration of a mobile phone according to Embodiment 3. FIG. 10 is a flowchart illustrating a processing operation in the third embodiment.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Mobile telephone 2 Upper housing | casing 3 Hinge part 4 Lower housing | casing 5 Display part 6 Speaker 7 Operation part 8 Microphone 9 Camera apparatus 10 Control part 11 Antenna 12 Communication part 13 Storage part 14 Acceleration sensor 15 Voice control part 16 Selection part 20 Image Analysis unit 30 Voice comparison unit

Claims (4)

Multiple microphones,
Detecting means for detecting the inclination of the communication terminal device;
Selection means for selecting an audio signal based on the sound collected by any one of the plurality of microphones based on the inclination of the communication terminal device detected by the detection means;
A communication terminal device comprising:   The communication terminal device according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit detects an inclination of the communication terminal device by detecting an acceleration applied to the communication terminal device. Further comprising an imaging device;
The communication terminal apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit detects an inclination of the communication terminal apparatus by analyzing a moving image captured by the imaging apparatus.   2. The communication terminal apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit detects an inclination of the communication terminal apparatus by comparing each audio signal collected by the plurality of microphones.