Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ugan Sivagnanenthirarajah

Sathyanarayanan Karivaradaswamy

Robert E Harris, Jr

Sanjeev Chandra Reddy

Sanjana Ramakrishnan Sunder

Michael Jeffrey Ajax

Sergii Viktorovych Liashenko

Sarah Anne Barnette

Sayak Chatterjee

Mark Lin

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)

A device receives a sensor payload at a sensor service. The sensor payload includes a data field that comprises a first value that corresponds to a reading by a sensor device. The device sends the sensor payload to a broker process that is separate from the sensor service and that hosts plug-in logic. The device receives a sensor payload update from the broker process. The sensor payload update includes a second value for the data field that is different from the first value. The second value was determined by the plug-in logic. The device creates a modified sensor payload from the sensor payload, including updating the data field to comprise the second value. The device initiates an operating system action based on the modified sensor payload.

Sensor broker for plug-ins

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Ugan Sivagnanenthirarajah