Digimarc Corporation

Novartis Ag

John Douglas Lord

Ravi K Sharma

Geoffrey B Rhoads

Jacob L Boles

Robert G Lyons

Tony F Rodriguez

Hugh L Brunk

Osama M Alattar

Alastair M Reed

Tomas Filler

William Y Conwell

Vojtech Holub

Brian T MacIntosh

Scott M Long

John F Stach

Yang Bai

Bruce L Davis

Brett Alan Bradley

Shankar Thagadur Shivappa

Eliot Rogers

Kurt M Eaton

Utkarsh Deshmukh

Thomas E Tarara

Carlos M Rodriguez

Ajith Mulki Kamath

Eric D Evans

Matthew M Weaver

Nicole Rhoads

Peter Bruce Challoner

Rebecca L Gerlach

Emil Samara

Brian T Macintosh

In one aspect, an elongated lighting module includes plural colors of LEDs that flash in a cyclical sequence to provide multi-spectral illumination. Several such modules can be arranged end-to-end to span a conveyor system that transports a stream of plastic waste items in a recycling center, enabling capture of differently-illuminated image frames depicting the items. Each module may include N LEDs of a first color (e.g., red) and M LEDs of a second color (e.g., blue), where N and M are different. Drive circuitry can be simplified by configuring the LEDs in strings of common colors, but with different counts. Electrical noise due to switching transients can be reduced by operating the LEDs at a low current when not being flashed. A great variety of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Lighting arrangements for material sorting

A plastic item, such as a beverage bottle, conveys two distinct digital watermarks, encoded using two distinct signaling protocols. A first, printed label watermark conveys a retailing payload, including a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) used by a point-of-sale scanner in a retail store to identify and price the item when presented for checkout. A second, plastic texture watermark conveys a recycling payload, including data identifying the composition of the plastic. The use of two different signaling protocols assures that a point-of-sale scanner will not spend its limited time and computational resources working to decode the recycling watermark, which lacks the data needed for retail checkout. In some embodiments, a recycling apparatus makes advantageous use of both types of watermarks to identify the plastic composition of the item (e.g., relating GTIN to plastic type using an associated database), thereby increasing the fraction of items that are correctly identified for sorting and recycling. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Recycling methods and systems, and related plastic containers

Signal processing devices and methods estimate a geometric transform of an image. One method measures correlation between a transformed reference signal component and an image, updates, based on the measured correlation that is below a threshold, coordinates of the reference signal component to a location within a neighborhood around the coordinates of the transformed reference signal component; determines a new geometric transform that transforms the reference signal components to updated coordinates; and applies the new geometric transform to extract encoded digital data from the image.

Signal processors and methods for estimating geometric transformations of images for digital data extraction

A stemware retention device for preventing tipping of stemware includes a first plate, which is substantially planar. Each slot of a set of slots extends into the first plate from its perimeter. A spacing element, which is attached to and which extends from a lower face of the first plate, supports the first plate above a substantially horizontal surface, such as a tabletop. A plurality of panels is attached to from the first plate's lower face so that each slot is bracketed by a pair of panels. Each panel extends from the first plate to proximate to the substantially horizontal surface. The panels are resiliently flexible so that each pair of panels can engage a base of an article of stemware as its stem is inserted into a respective slot. Thus, tipping of the article of stemware relative to the substantially horizontal surface is inhibited.

Stemware retention device

A plastic item, such as a beverage bottle, can convey two distinct digital watermarks, encoded using two distinct signaling protocols. A first, printed label watermark conveys a retailing payload, including a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) used by a point-of-sale scanner in a retail store to identify and price the item when presented for checkout. A second, plastic texture watermark may convey a recycling payload, including data identifying the composition of the plastic. The use of two different signaling protocols assures that a point-of-sale scanner will not spend its limited time and computational resources working to decode the recycling watermark, which may lack data needed for retail checkout. In some embodiments, a recycling apparatus makes advantageous use of both types of watermarks to identify the plastic composition of the item (e.g., relating GTIN to plastic type using an associated database), thereby increasing the fraction of items that are correctly identified for sorting and recycling. In other embodiments the plastic item (or a label thereon) bears only a single watermark. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Methods and arrangements for sorting items, useful in recycling

In some arrangements, product packaging is digitally watermarked over most of its extent to facilitate high-throughput item identification at retail checkouts. Imagery captured by conventional or plenoptic cameras can be processed (e.g., by GPUs) to derive several different perspective-transformed views&#x2014;further minimizing the need to manually reposition items for identification. Crinkles and other deformations in product packaging can be optically sensed, allowing such surfaces to be virtually flattened to aid identification. Piles of items can be 3D-modelled and virtually segmented into geometric primitives to aid identification, and to discover locations of obscured items. Other data (e.g., including data from sensors in aisles, shelves and carts, and gaze tracking for clues about visual saliency) can be used in assessing identification hypotheses about an item. Logos may be identified and used&#x2014;or ignored&#x2014;in product identification. A great variety of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Methods and arrangements for identifying objects

Mobile device positioning employs various forms of audio signal structures and detection methodologies. In one method, detection of an audio signal from a first source enables construction of a signal to facilitate detection of an audio signal from another source. Signals detected from these sources enable positioning of the mobile device receiving those signals. Another method forms audio signals transmitted from audio sources so that they have parts that add constructively and parts that differentiate the sources to enable positioning. Another audio signal based positioning method adaptively switches among positioning methods so that positioning remains operative as a mobile device moves toward and away from the sources. Another method tracks positioning history, evaluates it for errors and performs error mitigation to improve accuracy. Various other positioning technologies are detailed as well.

Mobile device indoor navigation

Content is identified using watermarking and/or other content recognition combined with contextual metadata, which facilitates identification and correlation with other content and metadata when it is posted to a network.

Watermarking and signal recognition for managing and sharing captured content, metadata discovery and related arrangements

The geometric pose of a patch of watermark data is estimated based on the position of a similar, but non-identical, patch of information within a data structure. The information in the data structure corresponds to a tiled array of calibration patterns that is sampled along at least three non-parallel paths. In a particular embodiment, the calibration patterns are sampled so that edges are globally-curved, yet locally-flat. Use of such information in the data structure enables enhanced pose estimation, e.g., speeding up operation, enabling pose estimation from smaller patches of watermark signals, and/or enabling pose estimation from weaker watermark signals. A great variety of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Watermark sensing methods and arrangements

A system learns to automatically identify, and detect, contextual conditions that may serve as action triggers to help please a user (or avoid annoying a user). Among other features, a simple sensor arrangement is detailed which, in addition to producing a customary stream of high bandwidth sensor data, provides an output of low bandwidth data. This low-bandwidth data serves to identify a particular reference pattern with which the high-bandwidth sensor data is found to correspond. Such a sensor can employ reference patterns discovered through pseudo-random trials. A great number of other advantageous features and arrangements are also detailed.

Sensing systems

Signal processing devices and methods estimate transforms between signals using a least squares technique. From a seed set of transform candidates, a direct least squares method applies a seed transform candidate to a reference signal and then measures correlation between the transformed reference signal and a suspect signal. For each candidate, update coordinates of reference signal features are identified in the suspect signal and provided as input to a least squares method to compute an update to the transform candidate. The method iterates so long as the update of the transform provides a better correlation. At the end of the process, the method identifies a transform or set of top transforms based on a further analysis of correlation, as well as other results.

Signal processors and methods for estimating transformations between signals with least squares

Signal detection and recognition employees coordinated illumination and capture of images under to facilitate extraction of a signal of interest. Pulsed illumination of different colors facilitates extraction of signals from color channels, as well as improved signal to noise ratio by combining signals of different color channels. The successive pulsing of different color illumination appears white to the user, yet facilitates signal detection, even for lower cost monochrome sensors, as in barcode scanning and other automatic identification equipment.

Coordinated illumination and image signal capture for enhanced signal detection

Signal processing devices and methods obtain an estimate of a geometric transform of an image signal, use it to obtain a measure of signal confidence of a reference signal in a sub-block of the image signal, and weight message estimates based on the signal confidence. The geometric transform is used as an approximation of the geometric distortion of an image after digital data is encoded in it, and it is used to compensate for this distortion to facilitate extracting embedded digital messages from the image. Due to the errors in the approximation, the signal confidence metric is determined and used to weight message symbol estimates extracted from the image.

Growing community of inventors

West Linn, OR, United States of America

John Douglas Lord