Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Barrett Brumitt

Stephen C Harris

Brian R Meyers

Steven A N Shafer

John Charles Krumm

Gregory Ray Smith

Steven Shafer

A system and process for providing a geometric model database for use in an ubiquitous computing environment. In general, the geometric model database system and process is capable of accepting information about the geometric state of the environment, building a geometric model of this environment, maintaining and storing the geometric model, and handling queries about the environment's geometric state. The task of building a geometric model begins by establishing a set of entities that are of interest in the environment. An entity represents an object which exists in the physical world. In the geometric model database, an entity is represented by a coordinate frame and an extent. Extents refer to the physical size, or some service region such as a field of view, associated with an entity. The location of an entity in the physical world is defined using 'measurements'. In general, a measurement is simply a mathematical description of the geometric relationship between two entities. More precisely, a measurement describes the position and orientation of one entity's coordinate frame, expressed in terms of another entity's coordinate frame. Measurements originating at an entity's frame are expressed in terms of that frame. While various mathematical representations of the geometric relationship between entities could be employed, a preferred one characterizes a measurement as the relative position, and the relative orientation or heading, of two entities along with a covariance matrix which describes the uncertainty in these values.

Geometric model database for use in ubiquitous computing

A system and a method for optically communicating information between a display and a camera that is observing the display. In general, the transmission of information is unidirectional in a direction from the display to the camera. The display transmits information to the camera that is observing the display by displaying a series of symbols and images (such as an alphabet) on the display. Information (such as a network address of the display or camera) may be transmitted to the camera without any prior shared knowledge between the two. The present invention also is capable of determining a spatial location (or pose) of the display (relative to a camera observing the display) by observing a pattern presented on the display and using well-known correlation techniques.

System and method for optically communicating information between a display and a camera

A process for determining the location of entities carrying transmitters (TXs) that transmit TX ID messages to at least one receiver (RX) connected to a computer, in a network of computers. Each RX sends data messages to its associated computer which includes an identifier identifying the TX transmitting the TX ID message, the signal strength of the received TX ID message, and a RX identifier. Each RX computer generates badge hit messages from each data message, and provides them to a centralized computer of the network. The centralized computer generates a badge hit table having a separate entry for each badge hit message, which has fields including the information received in the badge hit message and a hit time indicating the time the entry was added to the table. The badge hit table data is used to determining the location of the TXs, and so the entities.

Location measurement process for radio-frequency badges

A system and method for locating and tracking people and non-stationary objects of interest in a scene using a series of range images of the scene taken over time. The system and process generally entails first generating the series of range images which are preferably a continuous temporal sequence of depth maps of the scene. A background model is computed from a block of the range images. Once the background model has been computed, a range image generated subsequent to the block of range images is selected for processing. The background is then subtracted from this currently selected range image based on the background model to produce a foreground image. The foreground image is next segmented into regions, each of which represents a different person or object of interest in the scene captured by the currently selected range image. The locating process continues by projecting the segmented regions of the foreground image onto a ground plane of the scene. The ground plane coordinates determined in the projection procedure can be used to designate the location of each separate person or object of interest in the scene captured by the currently selected range image. However, if desired an optional ground plane segmentation refinement technique can be employed first to ensure each projected region represents only a single person or object. Once the location of each person or object of interest has been established, they can be tracked by analyzing subsequently generated range images.

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Barrett Brumitt