Imaging-Based Mute Control for Video Communication Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
In video communication sessions, participants often miss opportunities to speak due to forgotten muted microphones, as others may not notice their attempts to contribute, leading to irrecoverable missed moments, especially when the camera is off or the image stream is not shared.
Innovation Solution
An electronic device with a controller monitors the microphone status and image stream to detect mouth movements or gestures indicating an attempt to speak, autonomously generating prompts to unmute the microphone, either as an alert or automatically, ensuring the participant's input is not missed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If the microphone is muted to avoid ambient noise and feedback, then communication quality is improved, but the user cannot speak when intending to do so, leading to lost communication opportunities
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors the user's mouth movements and provides feedback by detecting when the user attempts to speak while muted. This feedback mechanism allows the system to recognize the user's speaking intent and trigger appropriate actions (notification or automatic unmuting), resolving the contradiction between maintaining mute status and capturing user contributions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables the user to self-correct the mute state through intuitive gestures. By detecting specific mouth movements or gestures that indicate speaking intent, the system allows the user to automatically restore audio transmission without manual intervention, thus serving the user's need to speak while maintaining the overall mute state for noise control.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the camera is turned off for privacy reasons, then privacy is protected, but other participants cannot see when the local participant wants to speak
Solution Approach 1:
The system replaces the visual camera-based indication of speaking intent with an alternative detection mechanism. Instead of relying on the camera to capture and transmit visual cues of the user wanting to speak, the system uses local sensors (microphone, motion sensors, or other input devices) to detect speaking intent and communicates this information to other participants through non-visual channels, thus preserving privacy while maintaining communication capability.
3Ease of operation
If manual unmuting is required to speak, then control over audio transmission is maintained, but users may forget to unmute, causing irrecoverable missed communication moments
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection of the user's speaking intent before the actual speaking occurs. By monitoring for cues such as mouth movements or preparatory gestures, the system can proactively notify the user or automatically unmute the microphone before the user forgets, thus preserving communication opportunities while maintaining user control through advance warning.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary mechanism between the user's intent to speak and the actual audio transmission. This intermediary (the detection and notification system) acts as a bridge that monitors the user's state and facilitates the unmuting process, either by alerting the user to unmute or by automatically doing so, thus preventing communication loss while respecting user control preferences.
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic device, computer program product, and method mitigates loss of communication between participants in a communication session when a local participant attempts to speak without manually unmuting the electronic device. The electronic device includes an image capturing device, a user interface device having a microphone, and a controller. The controller is communicatively coupled to the image capturing device and to the user interface device. The controller monitors, during the communication session with a second electronic device, an image stream received from the image capturing device for movements by the local participant in the communication session. The controller autonomously generates a prompt to unmute the microphone in response to determining that the microphone is muted while identifying at least one of a speaking movement of a mouth of the local participant to speak or a gesture by the local participant that correlates with the participant wanting to speak.