Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Sayak Chatterjee

Sathyanarayanan Karivaradaswamy

Robert E Harris, Jr

Sanjeev Chandra Reddy

Ugan Sivagnanenthirarajah

Sanjana Ramakrishnan Sunder

Sarah Anne Barnette

Mark Lin

Michael Jeffrey Ajax

Sergii Viktorovych Liashenko

Mike Ajax

A computer system receives a sensor payload from a human presence sensor that is associated with the computer system. The computer system determines, based on an arbitration policy, that the computer system is enabled to perform a particular action based on the priority of the human presence sensor. The arbitration policy determines the priority of the human presence sensor among a plurality of human presence sensors that are associated with the computer system. The computer system triggers the particular action based on the computer system being enabled to perform the particular action based on the content of the sensor payload.

Method for prioritizing human presence sensors in a computer system based on arbitration policies

User engagement is detected and used to control operation of a computing device. User engagement is detected by a sensor such as a camera that identifies if a user's face is oriented towards a display device. If the user is not facing the display device, the sensor determines that the user is unengaged. The computing device is thus able to perform a power-saving operation, such as dimming the display device, when the user is unengaged. The computing device includes an API that abstracts sensor data into a user engagement signal indicating that the user is either engaged or unengaged. The OS and applications running on the computing device act on the user engagement signal provided by the API without communicating directly with the sensor. The user engagement signal may be provided as an input to a state machine.

User engagement surfaced through an application programming interface (API)

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Sayak Chatterjee