Yahoo! JAPAN R&D

Akihiko Sugiyama (Yahoo Corporation), Masanori Kato (NEC Corporation), and Miki Sato (Denso Corporation) received the 2018 Achievement Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICEJ) for Development of Low Distortion Noise Suppression and Cancellation Algorithms and Its Applications to Commercial Products.

The integral part of the technologies, namely, weighted noise estimation and a generalized cross-coupled pilot filter structure, which achieve 90% more accurate noise estimation and were employed in mobile phone handsets, voice recorders, digital cameras, and robots, are remarkable. These technologies are not simply employed in a wide variety of products to enhance our daily life. They also received endorsements as 3GPP Certified Noise Suppressors, are employed in the MPEG SAOC (Spatial Audio Object Coding) Standard, and verified that speech recognition is feasible in the exhibit hall environment through a six-month demonstration with a communication robot at Aichi Expo2005, to name a few. Research and development efforts will continue to reflect such versatile use in real products and capability to boost performance of the existing speech recognition systems in the Yahoo business.