Talking book

Abstract

The present invention provides systems and methods of creating talking books that employ photo-electronics for autonomous page recognition. More particularly, this invention relates to systems and methods for employing one or more light sensing components, such as photoresistors, phototransistors, and photodiodes, on the pages of a book in order to recognize when a page is being read by a user so that an audio segment associated to the page, or pair of pages, that is being read by the user may be played. This invention also relates to employing light sensing components that can recognize and react user interactions with a talking book. Examples of a reaction would be to play a media segment for a particular action or to turn ON a particular LED.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 361,849, filed Mar. 5, 2002, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] This invention relates to systems and methods of recognizing what page a book is opened to (e.g, what page a user is reading from a book). More particularly, this invention relates to recognizing the page of a book that a user is reading and subsequently playing an audio segment associated to the recognized page. [0003] Talking books have been developed that employ mechanical schemes in order to recognize the particular page that a user is reading from a book. One example of such a mechanical talking book is present in Haas et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,514 that is assigned to Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, N.Y. [0004] Such mechanical talking books employ thick pages, usually made out of cardboard, that are placed in a binder. These bi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013] One or more light sensors may be placed on any one page or pair of pages. A delay may be incorporated into the book's functionality such that a sensor, or array of sensors, has to recognize the most light for a period of time (e.g., 1-5 seconds) before an audio segment associated to that sensor, or array of sensors, is played. Such a delay would allow a user to turn to a particular page without having to listen to the audio segments associated to the recently turned pages.

[0015] The audio associated to a page can take a variety of forms and, depending on the audio segment's format, can achieve a variety of different talking books. For example, the talking book can output an audio version of the text located on a particular page or set of pages. In this manner, the present invention could be utilized to teach young children to read. Such a book could also be utilized, for example, to read to people that have difficulty in seeing the text of a book. Additionally, some books, such as user manuals, usually are read while the user is performing some act. For example, a cook book contains pages with recipes. A reader of a cookbook occasionally attempts to do two things at once, read the book and carry out the recipe. A talking book of the present invention that employs text-associated audio segments can relieve one of the burdens that a cookbook user has; the necessity to physically read and re-read the instructions. Thus, an audio segment may be repeated if the playing of the audio segment completes and the user is still recognized as reading the same page.

[0016] Furthermore, if the audio segments are associated to the text of a book's pages then the text of the pages may be removed altogether. Thus, a book's whimsical and festive nature could be noticeably increased as a result of this alteration. For example, people buy traditional art books in a museum so that they can see the paintings in the museum at any time. However, such traditional art books usually have only small representations of the paintings because descriptive text is required for each painting. Yet, an art talking book of the present invention may eliminate text entirely. Thus, a talking book of the present invention may contain page-size representations of the paintings. If the amount of memory in which the media segments (e.g., a segmented audio version of the tour of the museum's collection contained in the book) associated to each page is large enough, the amount of description that can be stored in audio can easily surpass the amount of description that can be provided as text in a traditional art book.

Problems solved by technology

Such prior art mechanical talking books are deficient for many reasons.

First, these books require large, thick, and rigid pages which ultimately limit the number of pages that can be efficiently realized in the talking book.

As the number of pages increase in such books so does the complexity of the book's design.

Furthermore, magnets have to extend from each page, thereby increasing the book's size.

Moreover, these magnets only interact with the Hall effect sensors as the pages are turned.

If a user opens such a book to a random page, by opening one bulk of pages to the left of the book's spine and one bulk of pages to the right of the book's spine, the book has no way to distinguish what page the book is opened to.

Such conventional talking books do not have autonomous page recognition because these books sense when a page is turned to, not when a page is viewable to the user.

Infrared talking books are at a disadvantage because they have to keep track of the number of pages that have been turned.

Non-autonomous talking books are deficient because they require the user to interact with the book, such as turning the book's pages or interacting with a page's resistive sensor, in order to hear an audio segment for a particular page or portion of a page.

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