Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Dartmouth College

Matthew Paul Bell

Stephen Michael Polansky

Isaac Scott Noble

Guenael Thomas Strutt

Yuzo Watanabe

Dong Zhou

Jason Robert Weber

Yi Ding

Alexander L Honda

David Wayne Stafford

Peter Cheng

Kenneth Mark Karakotsios

James Plumley

Sarfraz Banglawala

Amber Nalu

Michael T Barbehenn

Sharadh Ramaswamy

Jai Vasanth

Aayush Aggarwal

Anatoly Mitlin

Vishnu R Ayyagari

Steven Scott Noble

Todd Greenwalt

Petr Svec

Dmitri Khoklov

Olia Kerzhner

An extendable augmented reality (AR) system for recognizing user-selected objects in different contexts. A user may select certain entities (text, objects, etc.) that are viewed on an electronic device and create notes or additional content associated with the selected entities. The AR system may remember those entities and indicate to the user when those entities are encountered by the user in a different context, such as in a different application, on a different device, etc. The AR system offers the user the ability to access the user created note or content when the entities are encountered in the new context.

User initiated augmented reality system

A fleet management system may create and manage tasks within an environment associated with fulfilling, sorting, inducting, and/or distributing packages, such as a warehouse, packaging facility, sortation center, or distribution center. The fleet management system may assign the tasks to agents within the environment. Each of the agents may have capabilities or tasks that the agents are configured to perform and the fleet management system may use these capabilities to assign the tasks to the agents. Additionally, tasks may be assigned based on a location of the agents within the environment. As tasks are generated, the fleet management system may determine a suitable agent to perform the task and may transmit instructions to the agent for carrying out the task. The fleet management system may provide a centralized platform to manage agents, optimize the assignment of tasks, and increase productivity within the environments.

Centralized fleet management system for optimizing task assignment

Described herein are systems, methods, and apparatus for determining audio context between an audio source and an audio sink and selecting signal profiles based at least in part on that audio context. The signal profiles may include noise cancellation which is configured to facilitate operation within the audio context. Audio context may include user-to-user and user-to-device communications.

Signal processing based on audio context

Systems and methods are provided herein for mitigating contentions between mobile drive units (MDUs) within a workspace. A schedule may be generated that identifies execution steps associated with respective tasks to be performed by each of a plurality of mobile drive units (MDUs) within the workspace. A contention related to a first execution step associated with a first mobile drive unit (MDU) and a second execution step associated with a second MDU may be identified. The schedule may be altered to include an indication of the contention. It may be determined that the first MDU is at the location of the contention. Accordingly, the contended space may be reserved for the first MDU, and the schedule may be modified to restrict the second MDU from executing the second execution step until the first MDU has completed the execution of the first execution step.

Contention management for mobile drive units

Approaches are described which enable a computing device (e.g., mobile phone, tablet computer) to display alternate views or layers of information within a window on the display screen when a user's finger (or other object) is detected to be within a particular range of the display screen of the device. For example, a device displaying a road map view on the display screen may detect a user's finger near the screen and, in response to detecting the finger, render a small window that shows a portion of a satellite view of the map proximate to the location of the user's finger. As the user's finger moves laterally above the screen, the window can follow the location of the user's finger and display the satellite views of the various portions of the map over which the user's finger passes.

Approaches for displaying alternate views of information

Systems and methods described herein pertain to maintaining a virtual representation of a workspace in a material handling system and updating the virtual representation. Methods described include maintaining the virtual representation of a material handling grid, maintaining one or more clients operable to direct movement of the plurality of drive units in the workspace; receiving an instruction to update the virtual representation of the drive-unit navigable grid including an updated virtual representation of the workspace; and querying a subset of the one or more clients to determine whether the update to the virtual representation would cause one conflicts within the workspace. Potential conflicts include, but are not limited to, 'stranded' resources which are no longer positioned on the material handling grid, and/or workstations that have not yet been suspended prior to the update. Methods further include, upon determining that the updated virtual representation would not cause a conflict, deploying the updated virtual representation to replace an existing virtual representation of the workspace.

Rapid workspace representation deployment for inventory systems

In one example, an intersection of a first path and a second path may be determined. The first path may be associated with a first mobile drive unit and the second path may be associated with a second mobile drive unit. A plurality of velocity sets may be determined based on the intersection. A velocity set may be selected from the plurality of velocity sets. The velocity set may include velocity values that correspond to the first mobile drive unit and the second mobile drive unit. The selected velocity set may be provided to at least one of the first mobile drive unit or the second mobile drive unit.

Coordination of mobile drive units

Approaches are described for managing a display of content on a computing device. Content (e.g., images, application data, etc.) is displayed on an interface of the device. An activation movement performed by a user (e.g., a double-tap) can cause the device to enable a content view control mode (such as a zoom control mode) that can be used to adjust a portion of the content being displayed on the interface. The activation movement can also be used to set an area of interest and display a graphical element indicating that the content view control mode is activated. In response to a motion being detected (e.g., a forward tilt or backward of the device), the device can adjust a portion of the content being displayed on the interface, such as displaying a 'zoomed-in' portion or a 'zoomed-out' portion of the image.

One-handed zoom

A user can make a symbol with their hand, or other such gesture, at a distance from a computing device that can be captured by at least one imaging element of the device. The captured information can be analyzed to attempt to determine the location of distinguishing features of the symbol in the image information. The image information is then compared to hand gesture information stored in, for example, a library of hand gestures for the user. Upon identifying a match, an input to an application executing on the computing device is provided when the image information contains information matching at least one hand gesture with at least a minimum level of certainty. The hand gesture could include a single 'static' gesture, such as a specific letter in sign language, for example, or include two or more 'static' gestures. The gesture could also include motion, such as hand movement.

Gesture recognition for device input

Systems and approaches are provided for presenting incoming notifications to a computing device based on a determined context of the computing device. Various sensors of the device can be used to determine the context of the device with respect to a user, the state of the device itself, or the context of the device with respect to the environment in which the device is situated. The user can then be informed of received notifications in a manner likely to get the user's attention while not being overly obtrusive to the user or others within the vicinity of the user.

Context-aware notifications

Described herein are systems and methods for the generation and maintenance of language models. Language models are developed based at least in part on transaction data from one or more users. These transactions may include purchases and other interactions between one or more users and one or more online merchants. The language models may be associated with a particular user or group of users. Ongoing transactions may modify the language models. The language models may be used to recognize spoken input from the one or more users.

Generation and maintenance of language model

Described herein are systems and methods for context-aware speech processing. A speech context is determined based on context data associated with a user uttering speech. The speech context and the speech uttered in that speech context may be used to build acoustic models for that speech context. An acoustic model for use in speech processing may be selected based on the determined speech context. A language model for use in speech processing may also be selected based on the determined speech context. Using the acoustic and language models, the speech may be processed to recognize the speech from the user.

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Sunol, CA, United States of America

Matthew Paul Bell