International Business Machines Corporation

Telelingo

Cesar Augusto Gonzales

Thomas K McCarthy

Elliot N Linzer

Eric Viscito

Thomas A Horvath

Krishna Chaitanya Ratakonda

William B Pennebaker

Jack Lawrence Kouloheris

Joan LaVerne Mitchell

Larisa Shwartz

Genady Grabarnik

Sumedh Wasudeo Sathaye

Ligang Lu

Lev Kozakov

Prasoon Tiwari

Dinesh C Verma

Kang-Won Lee

Agnes Yee Ngai

Deepak Srinivas Turaga

Vadim Sheinin

Peter Hans Westerink

Dov Ramm

Lurng-Kuo Liu

Malgorzata Elzbieta Stys

Charlene Ann Gebler

Andy G Lean

Roberto Valter Sicconi

Rajesh Rajagopalan

Norman H Kreitzer

Shu Xiao

Xiaoming Li

Cecelia L Dopp

A system for increasing the safety of voice conversations between drivers and remote parties is shown. The system includes an in-vehicle subsystem and a remote subsystem. The system includes a plurality of sensors which are configured to generate monitoring data. The system includes a computing device, which may be distributed between the subsystems and is configured to calculate a risk level as a function of the monitoring data. The computing device may engage an automatic safety response as a function of the risk level, that may include suspension or termination of on-going conversations among the parties, together with notification about the status of the communication channel. The safety response may be communicated to the driver by generating an alert. The in-vehicle and the remote subsystems communicate using a wireless connection and collaborate in engaging the automatic safety response and communicating any alerts to the driver and remote party using notifications.

Systems and methods for increasing the safety of voice conversations between drivers and remote parties

Systems and methods are provided that enable seamless access and control of hardware device resources through a common, device-independent interface without the need for device-specific drivers. For instance, system and methods are designed to expose capabilities/functions of hardware devices as web-based services which can be invoked to provide specific services based on the capabilities of the hardware devices.

Systems and methods for access and control of hardware device resources using device-independent access interfaces

Content delivery by a network node in a network is optimized. The network node is communicatively coupled between multiple client devices and at least one content service provider. A media streaming service provided by a content service provider is received at the network node over a first unicast link. The service is transmitted from the network node to a first requestor device via a second unicast link. A request from a second requestor device for the service is intercepted by the network node. If it is determined that a multicast optimization threshold has been reached and/or exceeded, the service is transmitted from the network node to the first and second requestor devices using a single multicast link, while the service is received from the content service provider over the first unicast link.

Content delivery mechanisms for multicast communication

Content delivery by a network node is optimized. The network node is communicatively coupled between multiple end user devices and at least one content service provider. A request for a media streaming service available from the content service provider is intercepted from a first requestor device. It is determined if the media streaming service is registered for delivery optimization based on at least one service rule specific to the media streaming service. It is determined if a second requestor device is currently receiving the media streaming service from the content service provider. In response to the media streaming service being received by the second requestor device, delivery optimization of the media streaming service is performed by replicating the media streaming service for delivery to the first requestor device. The replicated media streaming service is sent to the first requestor device.

Connection management and optimization for services delivered over networks

A method for extending the service life of a portable device includes monitoring a battery of a portable device; identifying a problem bank; reconfiguring a connection schema for the battery to replace the problem battery bank with at least one spare bank; conditioning or exercising the problem bank; connecting the portable device to a power supply to recharge the problem bank; and reconnecting the recharged or repaired bank according to the connection schema without the at least one spare bank. A method for extending the service life of a portable device includes monitoring power consumption of at least one of the hardware or software of a portable device; and reconfiguring the connection schema of the battery banks to redistribute power consumption of at least one of the hardware or software.

System to extend the service life of portable devices

A method and apparatus, particularly suited to SIMD instruction sets, to filter streaming video information encoded under a predictive encoding algorithm specified under video encoding standards, such as MPEG 4 or H.264/AVC. The filtering operation de-blocks or removes unwanted borders in the perceived video. During the filtering process, a series of filtering mask is generated based on temporal and spatial statistics of predictive encoded video information, which is then recursively applied to the video in order to gate filtered or unfiltered video to an output channel according to coefficients of the masks. The filtering mask effectively yields a decision or rule-based map that transforms the video on a pixel-by-pixel basis thereby avoiding complex and processor-intensive decision tree logic customarily required to process individual pixels of successive macroblocks that may have different filtering requirements.

Method of filtering pixels in a video encoding process

System and methods to extend the service life of portable devices

A system for transcoding compressed video signal, including a plurality of pictures, comprising an estimator to gather information and estimate the signal characteristics about the video signal; a decoder to completely or partially decode the compressed video signal; and an encoder to compress the reconstructed video signal according to a coding scheme devised on the estimated signal characteristics from the estimator.

Method and system for video transcoding

A method and apparatus is disclosed for presenting information to a user of an audiovisual appliance such as a television receiver, a set top box, or a DVD or a VCR player. The method includes extracting source text from a graphical representation of the source text in an associated audiovisual program; translating the extracted source text into a target text in a language different than a language of the source text; and presenting the target text in a human perceptible format in a synchronized manner with the associated audiovisual program. Translating the extracted source text may include an initial step of identifying the source language.

Method and apparatus for performing real-time subtitles translation

A system and method for reducing the memory requirements of a decoding subsystem by decoding some pictures multiple times. In a preferred embodiment a video decoder stores only two decoded frames plus a small fraction of a third decoded frame in memory.

Speed-memory tradeoff for MPEG decoders

The invention relates to a method for sensing the range of objects captured by an image or video camera using active illumination from a computer display. This method can be used to aid in vision based segmentation of objects. In the preferred embodiment of this invention, we compute the difference between two consecutive digital images of a scene captured using a single camera located next to a display, and using the display's brightness as an active source of lighting. For example, the first image could be captured with the display set to a white background, whereas the second image could have the display set to a black background. The display's light reflected back to the camera and, consequently, the two consecutive images' difference, will depend on the intensity of the display illumination, the ambient room light, the reflectivity of objects in the scene, and the distance of these objects from the display and the camera. Assuming that the reflectivity of objects in the scene is approximately constant, the objects which are closer to the display and the camera will reflect larger light differences between the two consecutive images. After thresholding, this difference can be used to segment candidates for the object in the scene closest to the camera. Additional processing is required to eliminate false candidates resulting from differences in object reflectivity or from the motion of objects between the two images.

Method and system for range sensing of objects in proximity to a display

A system and method for generating an MPEG compliant video stream with satisfactory visual quality. The method employs re-encoding at a higher (or lower) bit rate, only the segments with unsatisfactory visual picture quality while retaining other parts of the original video stream and then merging the re-encoded segments with the remaining original portions. If the original video stream is coded at a reasonable bit rate, the number and length of those segments with unsatisfactory visual picture quality will be few and short. Re-encoding only those segments can save very significant amount of cost and only requires minimal additional storage space. Furthermore, the portions with satisfactory picture quality will be retained. The system and method is applicable to MPEG and non-MPEG compliant data streams.

System and method for reencoding segments of buffer constrained video streams

Systems and methods are provided for allocating bits to pictures in accordance with the bit allocation constraints for operation at both constant and variable bit rates. A statistical complexity measure which is an estimate of the average encoding complexity of the entire data is updated after encoding each picture. This set of parameters, along with an estimate of the encoding complexity of the current picture and the desired average coding rate is used to allocate target bits for encoding the current picture. One method of allocating bits to a picture is to used the statistical complexity measure to vary the instantaneous rate of encoding and allocate bits for this picture so as to generate encoded data at this rate. Another method is to modulate the target generated by a conventional encoder using the current level of the Virtual Buffer Verifier and the deviation of the estimated encoding complexity of the current picture from the statistical complexity measures.

Single pass target allocation for video encoding

A video decoder/format/frame rate converter with common memory is provided. This device decodes a compressed, interlaced video stream and converts the decoded output to a non-interlaced format and/or a format with a different frame rate.

Growing community of inventors

Katonah, NY, United States of America

Cesar Augusto Gonzales