Sony Corporation

Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

Sony Electronics Inc

Ampl Labs, Inc.

Sony Group Corporation

Keith Resch

Peter Rae Shintani

Morio Usami

Bibhudendu Mohapatra

Gregory Carlsson

Fred Ansfield

William Clay

Pablo Antonio Espinosa

Jose Omar Gonzalez Hernandez

James Richard Milne

Allison Joi Burgueno

Kazuyuki Shikama

Michael Patton

Rafael Calderon

Oscar Manuel Vega

Tomoko Nishioka-Patton

Robert Hardacker

Robert Allan Unger

David Andrew Young

Kissei Matsumoto

Aran London Sadja

Hyehoon Yi

Loren F Pineda

An acoustic-based Direction of Arrival (DoA) system uses acoustic information to determine the direction of incoming sound, such as a person talking. The direction of the sound is then used to focus a laser-based time of flight (ToF) system to narrow the area of laser illumination, improving the signal to noise ratio because laser illumination is focused on the direction of the sound. The DoA system also provides elevation information pertaining to the source of the sound, to further narrow the required field of view of the laser ToF system.

Performance of a time of flight (ToF) laser range finding system using acoustic-based direction of arrival (DoA)

A networked speaker system automatically adjusts certain audio speaker system settings based on whether the system is inside a building or has been moved outside as may be sensed by one or capacitors on a speaker. Also, techniques are described for adjusting speaker driver direction based on walls or other barriers in a room or based on the location of a listener.

Capacitive environmental sensing for a unique portable speaker listening experience

Parallax views of objects are used to generate 3D depth maps of the objects using time of flight (TOF) information. In this way, the deleterious effects of multipath interference can be reduced to improve 3D depth map accuracy without using computationally intensive algorithms.

Generating 3D depth map using parallax

Each of plural devices includes a laser emitter and a camera for detecting reflections of laser light emitted by the device, so that plural of the devices can generate their own depth maps showing images within the field of view of their cameras. The resolution of each depth map may be improved by accessing a data store of prior images of objects and combining the prior images using super-resolution with current images of the depth maps.

Using super imposition to render a 3D depth map

A head mounted display (HMD) device that includes a plurality of sensors, an actuator, a plurality of protective mechanisms, and a processor configured to identify a situational state of a user of the HMD device within a proximity of the user, based on sensor input received from the plurality of sensors. A risk-level of a potential injury to the user from a component of the HMD device is determined based on the identified situational state and the sensor input. A protective mechanism is selected from the plurality of protective mechanisms based on the identified situational state and the determined risk-level. The actuator is controlled to deploy the selected protective mechanism to mitigate injury to the user from the component of the HMD device, based on the identified situational state and the determined risk-level.

Protection for head mounted display device

An apparatus has connectors to receive batteries. A power multiplexer is connected to the connectors. A processor is connected to the power multiplexer to execute a battery charge protocol including the operations of selecting at least one battery for charging, where the at least one battery is in a fast charge state that allows for substantially linear charge performance. Direct current is applied to the battery until the fast charge state is terminated. The selecting and applying operations are repeated until the fast charge state is terminated in each of the batteries. Direct current is then directed to the batteries until a full charge state is reached for each of the batteries.

Recharging platform for electronic devices

Machine learning is applied to both 2D images from an infrared imager imaging laser reflections from an object and to the 3D depth map of the object that is generated using the 2D images and time of flight (TOF) information. In this way, the 3D depth map accuracy can be improved without increasing laser power or using high resolution imagers.

3D depth map

Multiple independently movable devices are located upon a platform. On the platform is a directional microphone array. Each of the movable devices is assigned a unique audio signature, which may be a pulse train of chirps or a pseudo random signal or some other audio sequence that is unique to the respective device. Each movable device announces itself with its unique audio signature, and the platform's directional microphone system determines the location from which the unique audio signature comes from. For range, a difference between the time of flight (TOF) of the light relative to the sound signature is used. As another technique a unique audio signature may be an audio water mark concealed in normal audio which may be emitted by the movable device. The watermark provides the identifying information of each movable device.

Using direction of arrival with unique audio signature for object location detection

A networked speaker system automatically adjusts certain audio speaker system settings based on whether the system is inside a building or has been moved outside. Also, techniques are described for adjusting speaker driver direction based on walls or other barriers in a room or based on the location of a listener.

Environmental sensing for a unique portable speaker listening experience

A networked speaker system automatically moves a speaker in one or more of the horizontal planes, the vertical plane, and elevation (z-dimension) to maintain the axis of the sound cone directed toward a listener as a listener moves about a space. In addition, or alternatively, the speaker can be moved to optimize sound performance when multiple speakers are activated.

Automatically movable speaker to track listener or optimize sound performance

A camera based depth mapping system. Depth information is coded with colors to make a laser-generated 3D depth map easier to interpret. In the event that the laser illumination is not sufficient, the depth information can have a low signal to noise ratio, i.e., the depth map can be noisy. Color noise reduction techniques are used to alleviate this problem.

Color noise reduction in 3D depth map

A micro mirror assembly widens the field of view (FOV) of a 3D depth map sensor, alleviating the limitation of limited laser illumination power and limitations on the resolution of the available imaging device.

Using micro mirrors to improve the field of view of a 3D depth map

Multiple camera systems which use laser illumination for ranging benefit from a heartbeat to synchronize the timing of the individual lasers to eliminate collisions of multiple simultaneous laser emissions. An optical micromesh system provides for the dynamic entry and egress of mobile and stationary nodes. The optical communication between nodes may be controlled using time domain multiplexing (TDM) to avoid cross talk and communication collision due to overlapping laser illumination. By using an optical, laser based micromesh network, laser ranging can be used to dynamically map node location.

Growing community of inventors

San Diego, CA, United States of America

Keith Resch