Altumview Systems Inc.

Cortic Technology Corp.

Him Wai Ng

Xing Xing Wang

Jie Liang

Minghua Chen

Mehdi Seyfi

Jiannan Zheng

Ye Lu

Yu Gao

Weiming Wang

Andrew Tsun-Hong Au

Jianbing Wu

Rui Ma

Chi Chung Chan

Dong Zhang

Eric Honsch

Kaichao Wang

Zhen Wang

Karen Ly-Ma

Adrian Fettes

Zili Yi

Sami Ma

Kuan Huan Lin

Kwun-Keat Chan

Adrian Kee-Ley Auk

In various embodiments, software architecture and network topology are provided to implement a decentralized distributed computing environment. In some embodiments, the novel network topology is configured as a mesh network such that individual hub devices are connected directly or indirectly with each other. An individual worker can be added to or removed from this network via connection with the hub devices without affecting the rest of the workers in the network and without user intervention or knowledge. In those embodiments, a software package is deployed on a given hub device to enable the hub device to perform network discovery, communicating with other hub devices in the decentralized distributed computing environment, determine a load balance for the decentralized distributed computing environment, distribute a task to an available worker in the decentralized distributed computing environment, manage one or more functional modules in the decentralized distributed computing environment, and/or any other functionalities.

Decentralized distributed computing environment

Various embodiments of a vision-based privacy-preserving embedded fall-detection system are disclosed. This embedded fall-detection system can include one or more cameras for capturing video images of one or more persons. Moreover, this embedded fall-detection system can include various fall-detection modules for processing the captured video images including: a pose-estimation module, an action-recognition module, and a fall-detection module, all of which can perform the intended fall-detection functionalities within the embedded system environment in real-time in order to detect falls of the one or more persons. When a fall is detected, instead of sending the original captured images, the embedded fall-detection system can transmit sanitized video images to the server, wherein each detected person is represented by a skeleton figure in place of the actual person images, thereby preserving the privacy of the detected person. The embedded fall-detection system can be implemented as an embedded vision sensor to be installed at a single fixed location.

Method and system for privacy-preserving fall detection

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of a face-image training data preparation system for performing large-scale face-image training data acquisition, preprocessing, cleaning, balancing, and post-processing. The disclosed training data preparation system can collect a very large set of loosely-labeled images of different people from the public domain, and then generate a raw training dataset including a set of incorrectly-labeled face images. The disclosed training data preparation system can then perform cleaning and balancing operations on the raw training dataset to generate a high-quality face-image training dataset free of the incorrectly-labeled face images. The processed high-quality face-image training dataset can be subsequently used to train deep-neural-network-based face recognition systems to achieve high performance in various face recognition applications. Compared to conventional face recognition systems and techniques, the disclosed training data preparation system and technique provide a fully-automatic, highly-deterministic and high-quality training data preparation procedure which does not rely heavily on assumptions.

High-quality training data preparation for high-performance face recognition systems

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of a real-time face-detection, face-tracking, and face-pose-selection subsystem within an embedded vision system. In one aspect, a process for identifying near-duplicate-face images using this subsystem is disclosed. This process includes the steps of: receiving a determined best-pose-face image associated with a tracked face when the tracked face is determined to be lost; extracting an image feature from the best-pose-face image; computing a set of similarity values between the extracted image feature and each of a set of stored image features in a feature buffer, wherein the set of stored image features are extracted from a set of previously transmitted best-pose-face images; determining if any of the computed similarity values is above a predetermined threshold; and if no computed similarity value is above the predetermined threshold, transmitting the best-pose-face image to a server and storing the extracted image feature into the feature buffer.

Enhanced face-detection and face-tracking for resource-limited embedded vision systems

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of an age and gender estimation system capable of performing age and gender classifications on face images having sizes greater than the maximum number of input pixels supported by a given small-scale hardware convolutional neural network (CNN) module. In some embodiments, the proposed age and gender estimation system can first divide a high-resolution input face image into a set of image patches with judiciously designed overlaps among neighbouring patches. Each of the image patches can then be processed with a small-scale CNN module, such as the built-in CNN module in Hi3519 SoC. The outputs corresponding to the set of image patches can be subsequently merged to obtain the output corresponding to the input face image, and the merged output can be further processed by subsequent layers in the age and gender estimation system to generate age and gender classifications for the input face image.

Age and gender estimation using small-scale convolutional neural network (CNN) modules for embedded systems

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of a real-time face-detection, face-tracking, and face-pose-selection subsystem within an embedded video system. In one aspect, a process for performing real-time face-pose-estimation and best-pose selection for a detected person captured in a video is disclosed. This process includes the steps of: receiving a video image among a sequence of video frames of a video; performing a face detection operation on the video image to detect a set of faces in the video image; detecting a new person appears in the video based on the set of detected faces; tracking the new person through subsequent video images in the video by detecting a sequence of face images of the new person in the subsequent video images; and for each of the subsequent video images which contains a detected face of the new person being tracked: estimating a pose associated with the detected face and updating a best pose for the new person based on the estimated pose. Upon detecting that the new person has disappeared from the video, the process then transmits a detected face of the new person corresponding to the current best pose to a server, wherein transmitting the detected face having the best pose among the sequence of detected face images reduces network bandwidth and improves storage efficiency.

Method and apparatus for real-time face-tracking and face-pose-selection on embedded vision systems

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of a joint face-detection and head-pose-angle-estimation system based on using a small-scale hardware CNN module such as the built-in CNN module in HiSilicon Hi3519 system-on-chip. In some embodiments, the disclosed joint face-detection and head-pose-angle-estimation system is configured to jointly perform multiple tasks of detecting most or all faces in a sequence of video frames, generating pose-angle estimations for the detected faces, tracking detected faces of a same person across the sequence of video frames, and generating 'best-pose' estimation for the person being tracked. The disclosed joint face-detection and pose-angle-estimation system can be implemented on resource-limited embedded systems such as smart camera systems that are only integrated with one or more small-scale CNN modules. The proposed system in conjunction with using a subimage-based technique has made it possible to performance multiple face detection and face recognition tasks on high-resolution input images with small-scale low-cost CNN modules.

Joint face-detection and head-pose-angle-estimation using small-scale convolutional neural network (CNN) modules for embedded systems

Embodiments of a convolutional neural network (CNN) system based on using resolution-limited small-scale CNN modules are disclosed. In some embodiments, a CNN system includes: a receiving module for receiving an input image of a first image size, the receiving module can be used to partition the input image into a set of subimages of a second image size; a first processing stage that includes a first hardware CNN module configured with a maximum input image size, the first hardware CNN module is configured to sequentially receive the set of subimages and sequentially process the received subimages to generate a set of outputs; a merging module for merging the sets of outputs into a set of merged feature maps; and a second processing stage for receiving the set of feature maps and processing the set of feature maps to generate an output including at least one prediction on the input image.

Convolutional neural network (CNN) system based on resolution-limited small-scale CNN modules

Embodiments described herein provide various examples of a face detection system, based on using a small-scale hardware convolutional neural network (CNN) module configured into a multi-task cascaded CNN. In some embodiments, a subimage-based CNN system can be configured to be equivalent to a large-scale CNN that processes the entire input image without partitioning such that the output of the subimage-based CNN system can be exactly identical to the output of the large-scale CNN. Based on this observation, some embodiments of this patent disclosure make use of the subimage-based CNN system and technique on one or more stages of a cascaded CNN or a multitask cascaded CNN (MTCNN) so that a larger input image to a given stage of the cascaded CNN or the MTCNN can be partitioned into a set of subimages of a smaller size. As a result, each stage of the cascaded CNN or the MTCNN can use the same small-scale hardware CNN module that is associated with a maximum input image size constraint.

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Coquitlam, Canada

Him Wai Ng