Panasonic Corporation

Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.

Shigenori Maeda

Kotaro Sakata

Tomohiro Konuma

Maki Yamada

Kazuya Nomura

Masaki Yamauchi

Toshimasa Takaki

Takashi Matsuyama

Hiroyasu Imoto

Gerald Pfeiffer

Joerg Vogler

Takashi Nishimori

Takatsugu Hirayama

Hiroaki Kawashima

Toyoji Gushima

Hironori Tomita

Toshiyasu Tanaka

Akihiro Miyazaki

Tadashi Ono

Yoichi Ikeda

Tomonori Nakamura

Koji Asai

Ryo Yonetani

Tomonari Takahashi

Yuki Shinomoto

Satoshi Inami

Noriyo Hara

Takahiro Higashimura

Meiko Maeda

Fukutaro Sekine

Renji Honda

Katsushige Amano

A method for forming a crystal nucleus in a latent heat storage material contains a solvent and a dissolved substance. The solvent contains water as the main ingredient. The latent heat storage material retains latent heat in a supercooled state. The method includes: (a) separating out an anhydride of the dissolved substance by heating or cooling part of the latent heat storage material in the supercooled state; and (b) supplying a droplet comprising water to the anhydride, to terminate the supercooled state of the latent heat storage material, and make the latent heat storage material dissipate heat.

Method for forming crystal nucleus in latent heat storage material and heat storage device

An interest degree estimating device, which estimates a degree of interest of a user in a video displayed on a screen, includes: an eye gaze detecting unit for detecting an eye gaze direction of the user; a saliency information obtaining unit for obtaining saliency information on a saliency area having salient attractiveness in the video; and a user response analyzing unit for calculating a correlation between the saliency area specified from the obtained saliency information and the detected eye gaze direction, and estimate the degree of interest of the user in the video, the degree of interest being higher as the calculated correlation is higher.

Degree of interest estimating device and degree of interest estimating method

A gesture input device includes: a coordinate input detecting unit which sequentially detects coordinate set sequences of a user hand position; a gesture start detecting unit which detects a component indicating a first hand movement for starting a gesture, from a detected first coordinate sequence; a guide image generating unit which generates a gesture guide image for guiding the user to make a gesture including a second hand movement, when the first hand movement component is detected; an intended action component detecting unit which detects a second hand movement component as an intended action component, from a second coordinate sequence detected after the gesture guide image is displayed on the display screen; and a control signal generating unit which detects a component indicating a hand movement corresponding to the gesture from the second coordinate sequence when the intended action component is detected, and generate a control signal according to the detection result.

Gesture input device and gesture input method

Included are: a plural-push information management unit; a screen attention degree determination unit; a selection operation history collection unit; a selection probability calculation unit calculating a user's selection probability for each category; and a display style determination unit causing pieces of push information in a category having a higher probability to be displayed in a more easily selectable display style. The categories include a relevance category including pieces of push information regarding content displayed on the screen. The selection probability calculation unit calculates a selection probability of the relevance category having a first attention degree as a screen attention degree to be higher than that having the second attention degree lower than the first attention degree; and calculates a selection probability having a first number as the number of selection times to be higher than that having a second number smaller than the first number.

Display control device, integrated circuit, and display control method

An instruction input device includes: a first direction detection unit detecting the first direction in which the user is looking; a second direction detection unit detecting a second direction in which the user is performing a pointing operation; a gaze position calculation unit calculating a gaze position of the user on the screen; a reference coordinate group calculation unit calculating a reference line in space corresponding to the gaze position and connecting the user and the screen; an offset amount calculation unit calculating a distance of the second direction between the reference line and the input coordinate indicating the user's hand as an offset amount with respect to the gaze position; and a pointer display position calculation unit calculating a position in which a distance of the first screen predetermined direction between the position and the gaze position is the offset amount on the screen.

Instruction input device, instruction input method, program, recording medium, and integrated circuit

Provided is a lifestyle collecting apparatus that collects information for determining a lifestyle of a user, and includes: an object information detecting unit configured to detect object information representing an object around the user; a relevance degree calculating unit configured to calculate a relevance degree of the user to the object, using the object information; an appearance information extracting unit configured to extract appearance information from the object information, and add the relevance degree to the extracted appearance information, the appearance information representing an appearance of the object; and a lifestyle database which stores the appearance information to which the relevance degree has been added, as the information for determining the lifestyle of the user.

Lifestyle collecting apparatus, user interface device, and lifestyle collecting method

A user interface device estimates a user's degree of interest, for performing an input process on the basis of the user's degree of interest in a plurality of objects displayed on a screen. The device includes a gaze direction detection unit that detects a gaze direction of the user; a gaze duration calculation unit that calculates gaze duration during which the gaze direction has remained on each of the plurality of objects; an eye-attracting force calculation unit that calculates eye-attracting force of each of the plurality of objects; and a degree of interest estimation unit that estimates the user's degree of interest in each of the plurality of objects, such that the longer the gaze duration is the higher the degree of interest becomes, and that the smaller the eye-attracting force is the higher the degree of interest becomes.

User interface device and input method

Provided is a remote control command setting device capable of regulating some operations while being easy to handle for children. The device reconfigures a correspondence between an operation for an operation area having multiple operation buttons arranged therein and a control command for an electric device. The device includes an operation history holding unit () for accumulating operation history for the operation area, a control command setting unit () for reconfiguring an available control command on the basis of the operation history, and an operation area setting unit () for reconfiguring a sub-area in the operation area on the basis of the operation history and the available control command.

Remote control command setting device and method for setting remote control command

A gaze target determination device includes an event setting unit that generates, for each object at different times, a display event which triggers a movement of the gaze direction of the user who is gazing at the object and which indicates a movement or a change of the object; and a gaze trajectory calculation unit that calculates a gaze trajectory based on the detected user's gaze direction. An eye movement event detection unit detects an event detection time which is a time at which the gaze direction moves according to the display event, based on the calculated gaze trajectory. A synchronization structure analysis unit calculates, for each object, time difference between the event detection time and event occurrence time; and a gaze target determination unit determines the object at which the user is gazing from among the objects, based on the calculated time difference.

Gaze target determination device and gaze target determination method

Provided is a viewing terminal apparatus that can present an appropriate result of statistics on viewing of a content for diversified viewing modes. The viewing terminal apparatus includes: a category determining unit that determines, as a viewer category, a relationship between viewers who are viewing a content displayed on a display; a transmitting unit that transmits, to the viewing statistics-gathering apparatus, first viewing status information indicating the content that is being viewed by the viewers and the viewer category determined by the category determining unit, the content being associated with the viewer category; and a viewing statistics presenting unit that obtains viewing statistics information from the viewing statistics-gathering apparatus, and presents a result of statistics that is (i) indicated by the obtained viewing statistics information and (ii) a result of statistics on viewing of a content only by viewers who belong to a predetermined viewer category.

Viewing terminal apparatus, viewing statistics-gathering apparatus, viewing statistics-processing system, and viewing statistics-processing method

A user interface device () includes a display unit () which displays a first work space assigned to a user and a second work space different from the first workspace; a detection unit () which detects a position of the user; a calculation unit () which calculates an appropriate distance between the user and the second work space according to a type of an application program controlled by the user through the first work space; and a notification unit () which notifies the user that a distance between the position of the user detected by the detection unit () and the second work space is shorter than the appropriate distance calculated by the calculation unit ().

User interface device, user interface method, and recording medium

A user interface device () includes: a detection unit () which detects a position of a user; a display unit () which displays a work space; and a control unit () which controls display of an independent object which belongs to no user. The control unit () moves the independent object in a mode which varies between when the independent object is in a face-to-face space of the display unit () which is face to face with the position of the user and when the independent object is outside the face-to-face space. The control unit () also stops the moving independent object in a workspace assigned to the user when the user obtains the independent object.

The present invention provides an information displaying apparatus which efficiently arouses an interest of the audience member to content to be displayed. An information displaying apparatus () includes: a displaying unit () which displays first content on a display; an audience state detecting unit () which detects an audience state representing a physical state of an audience member positioned in front of the display; an interest degree estimating unit () which estimates an interest degree based on the audience state detected by the audience state detecting unit (), the interest degree indicating a degree of interest of the audience member in the first content displayed on the display by the displaying unit (); and a display control unit () which causes the displaying unit () to display second content with a clarity degree or an exposure degree of at least a part of the second content reduced below a predetermined clarity degree or a predetermined exposure degree when magnitude of a change rate of the interest degree estimated by the interest degree estimating unit () is smaller than a first threshold.

Information displaying apparatus and information displaying method

A communication assistance device () enables smooth and active communication between users, and includes a topic node generation unit () that calculates a topic appropriateness value based on the number of pieces of content from which meta information has been extracted or the number of times each piece of content including the meta information has been viewed, and generates a first topic node including the meta information and the topic appropriateness value, an integrated topic node generation unit () that obtains first topic nodes for a plurality of users, and generates, for every item of meta information, an integrated topic node storing the topic appropriateness value corresponding to each user, a topic node expansion unit () that generates an expanded topic node as a new topic node based on the item of meta information for the integrated topic node, a common-topic-candidate extraction unit () that extracts a common topic candidate between the users from the integrated topic node or the expanded topic node, a display unit () that displays the common topic candidate, and an input unit () that receives input of at least one of the displayed common topic candidates.

Growing community of inventors

Kyoto, Japan

Shigenori Maeda