Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Vehicle external speaker system
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Application No.: US16889886Application Date: 2020-06-02
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Publication No.: US11044566B2Publication Date: 2021-06-22
- Inventor: John Robert Van Wiemeersch , Stuart C. Salter , Ross Dykstra Pursifull , Paul Kenneth Dellock , Kristopher Karl Brown , Joshua Wheeler
- Applicant: Ford Global Technologies, LLC
- Applicant Address: US MI Dearborn
- Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC
- Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC
- Current Assignee Address: US MI Dearborn
- Agency: Bejin Bieneman PLC
- Agent Frank Lollo
- Main IPC: H04R27/00
- IPC: H04R27/00 ; H04W4/44 ; G06K9/00 ; G06T7/70 ; H04R29/00 ; H04R3/00 ; G08B7/06 ; G06K9/62

Abstract:
A system includes a microphone mounted inside a vehicle, a speaker mounted outside a passenger cabin of the vehicle and directed outside the vehicle, a camera with a field of view encompassing a seat in the passenger cabin of the vehicle, and a computer in communication with the microphone, speaker, and camera. The computer is programmed to, in response to data from the camera indicating a gesture by an occupant of the seat, activate the speaker to broadcast based on data transmitted by the microphone; and prevent the speaker from activating in response to data indicating that a biometric characteristic of a pedestrian outside the vehicle either matches a stored biometric characteristic or fails to match any of a plurality of stored biometric characteristics.
Information query