Providing Interactive Feedback, on a Spoken Announcement, for Vehicle Occupants

Abstract

A method for providing interactive feedback for vehicle occupants includes outputting a spoken announcement to a vehicle occupant. An acoustic reaction sensing means detects whether the vehicle occupant has understood the spoken announcement. The announcement is repeated when it is detected that the vehicle occupant as not understood the spoken announcement.

Claims

1-10. (canceled)

11. A method for providing interactive feedback for vehicle occupants, the method comprising: outputting a spoken announcement to a vehicle occupant; detecting, by way of an acoustic response detection means, whether the vehicle occupant has understood the spoken announcement; and repeating the spoken announcement in response to detecting that the vehicle occupant has not understood the spoken announcement.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein the detecting includes detecting at least one acoustically expressed lack of understanding by the vehicle occupant.

13. The method according to claim 11, further comprising: detecting, by way of a visual response detection, whether the vehicle occupant has understood the spoken announcement.

14. The method according to claim 13, further comprising: activating and maintaining as active for a predefined time the acoustic response detection means and the visual response detection means during or shortly before the end of the spoken announcement.

15. The method according to claim 14, wherein the predefined time is a fixed time interval or until detecting that the spoken announcement was understood.

16. A vehicle, comprising: a speech output device configured to output spoken announcements an occupant of the vehicle; an acoustic response detection means configured to detect a spoken response by a vehicle occupant; and a control unit configured to: receive signals from the acoustic response detection means, the signals corresponding to the spoken response; determine from the signals whether the occupant has understood the spoken announcement; and control the speech output device to repeat the spoken announcement, in response to determining that the occupant has not understood the spoken announcement.

17. The vehicle of claim 16, further comprising: a visual response detection means configured to detect a visual response by the vehicle occupant, wherein the control unit is further configured to: receive additional signals from the visual response detection means, the additional signals corresponding to the visual response, and determine from the additional signals whether the occupant has understood the spoken announcement.

18. A non-transitory processor readable medium having stored thereon software that, when executed by a computer, cause the processor to perform a method for providing interactive feedback for vehicle occupants, the method comprising: causing a spoken announcement to be outputted to a vehicle occupant; detecting, on the basis of signals received from an acoustic detection means in response to the output spoken announcement, whether the vehicle occupant has understood the spoken announcement; and causing the spoken announcement to be repeated in response to detecting that the vehicle occupant has not understood the spoken announcement.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

[0017] FIG. 1 shows a schematic illustration of important components for performing the method in a vehicle according to one embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

[0018] FIG. 1 shows a schematic view that explains both the most important components for performing the method, and the method. A speech output device is installed in the vehicle and serves to output a spoken announcement 2 to a vehicle occupant 1, for example the driver. If said driver has not understood the spoken announcement 2 and gives an appropriate acoustic response, which expresses the lack of understanding, as symbolized in FIG. 1 as a speech bubble containing “??”, this is detected by an acoustic response detection means 3, for example a microphone. The acoustic response detection means 3 is in this case preferably activated shortly before the end of or directly after the end of the spoken announcement 2. If an acoustic response has been detected, this is transmitted to a control unit 4 that is designed to process the acoustic signal and to interpret whether the vehicle occupant 1 has thus expressed his lack of understanding. If this is the case, the control unit 4 outputs a signal to the speech output device so that this repeats the spoken announcement 2. If the vehicle occupant 1 has again not understood the announcement, the method is repeated until no further acoustic expression of the lack of understanding is detected.

[0019] In order to improve the accuracy of the detection as to whether or not a vehicle occupant 1 has understood the spoken announcement 2, it is possible to use additional visual response detection means (not shown), as already mentioned. These may additionally detect mimics and/or gestures, and the control unit 4 may use this additional information to assess whether or not the vehicle occupant 1 has understood the spoken announcement 2 through his acoustic expression.