The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Accenture Global Services Gmbh

Yaron Rachlin

Christopher C Yu

Juha-Pekka J Laine

Benjamin F Lane

Robin M A Dawson

Piotr Indyk

Sumanth Kaushik

Brian Gardiner

Rishi Gupta

Eric Price

Rayid Ghani

Charles Wynn

Ryan Sullenberger

Rami S Mangoubi

Katharina Probst

Michael F McManus

Ralph Hamilton Shepard, Iii

Steven Hoeschele

Katherine Probst

Adam Milstein

The ability to communicate with a specific subject at a prescribed location who lacks any communications equipment opens up many intriguing possibilities. Communications across noisy rooms, hail and warn applications, and localized communications directed at only the intended recipient are a few possibilities. We disclose and show localized acoustic communications, which we call photoacoustic communications, with a listener at long standoff distances using a modulated laser transmitted toward the receiver's ear. The optically encoded information is converted into acoustic messages via the photoacoustic effect. The photoacoustic conversion of the optical information into an audible signal occurs via the absorption of the light by ambient water vapor in the near area of the receiver's ear followed by airborne acoustic transmission to the ear. The recipient requires no external communications equipment to receive audible messages.

Methods and apparatus for acoustic laser communications

Hyperspectral imaging spectrometers have applications in environmental monitoring, biomedical imaging, surveillance, biological or chemical hazard detection, agriculture, and minerology. Nevertheless, their high cost and complexity has limited the number of fielded spaceborne hyperspectral imagers. To address these challenges, the wide field-of-view (FOV) hyperspectral imaging spectrometers disclosed here use computational imaging techniques to get high performance from smaller, noisier, and less-expensive components (e.g., uncooled microbolometers). They use platform motion and spectrally coded focal-plane masks to temporally modulate the optical spectrum, enabling simultaneous measurement of multiple spectral bins. Demodulation of this coded pattern returns an optical spectrum in each pixel. As a result, these computational reconfigurable imaging spectrometers are more suitable for small space and air platforms with strict size, weight, and power constraints, as well as applications where smaller or less expensive packaging is desired.

Computational reconfigurable imaging spectrometer

Privacy is defined in the context of a guessing game based on the so-called guessing inequality. The privacy of a sanitized record, i.e., guessing anonymity, is defined by the number of guesses an attacker needs to correctly guess an original record used to generate a sanitized record. Using this definition, optimization problems are formulated that optimize a second anonymization parameter (privacy or data distortion) given constraints on a first anonymization parameter (data distortion or privacy, respectively). Optimization is performed across a spectrum of possible values for at least one noise parameter within a noise model. Noise is then generated based on the noise parameter value(s) and applied to the data, which may comprise real and/or categorical data. Prior to anonymization, the data may have identifiers suppressed, whereas outlier data values in the noise perturbed data may be likewise modified to further ensure privacy.

Data anonymization based on guessing anonymity

Devices and methods for multiplexed imaging are provided. In one embodiment, an imaging device can simultaneously direct light of a same spectrum from each of a plurality of image channels onto an image sensor to create a multiplexed image on the sensor. Each image channel can collect light from different portions of an extended field of view or from the same portion with different perspectives. The device can also include one or more encoders to encode light from the channels prior to detection. The devices and methods described herein can also include disambiguating a captured multiplexed image to create images for each of the plurality of image channels. Disambiguated images can cover the extended field of view at a high spatial resolution despite using only a single small format image sensor, or can produce stereo or 3D images having the full resolution of the sensor.

Devices and methods for optically multiplexed imaging

An imaging apparatus and corresponding method according to an embodiment of the present invention enables high-resolution, wide-field-of-view, high sensitivity imaging. An embodiment of the invention is a camera system that utilizes motion of an optical element, such as a spatial filtering mask or of the camera itself, to apply different spatial filtering functions to a scene to be imaged. Features of a spatial filtering mask implementing the different filtering functions are adjacent along an axis of the spatial mask, and a pitch of the features of the mask is smaller than a pitch of the sensor elements. An imaging reconstructor having knowledge of the filtering functions can produce a high-resolution image from corresponding low-resolution coded imaging data captured by the imaging system. This approach offers advantages over conventional high-resolution, wide-field imaging, including an ability to use large-pitch, lower cost sensor arrays, and transfer and store much less data.

Method and apparatus for motion coded imaging

Methods and apparatuses for compressive sensing that enable efficient recovery of features in an input signal based on acquiring a few measurements corresponding to the input signal. One method of compressive sensing includes folding an image to generate first and second folds, and recovering a feature of the image based on the first and second folds without reconstructing the image. One example of a compressive sensing apparatus includes a lens, a focal plane array coupled to the lens and configured to generate first and second folds based on the image, and a decoder configured to receive the first and second folds and to recover a feature of the image without reconstructing the image. The feature may be a local geometric feature or a corner. Compressive sensing methods and apparatuses for determining translation and rotation between two images are also disclosed.

Compressive sensing with local geometric features

A method and apparatus for estimating and compensating for a broad class of non-Gaussian sensor and process noise. In one example, a coded filter combines a dynamic state estimator (for example, a Kalman filter) and a non-linear estimator to provide approximations of the non-Gaussian process and sensor noise associated with a dynamic system. These approximations are used by the dynamic state estimator to correct sensor measurements or to alter the dynamic model governing evolution of the system state. Examples of coded filters leverage compressive sensing techniques in combination with error models based on concepts of compressibility and the application of efficient convex optimization processes.

Coded filter

A pixel array including circuitry for combining charges accumulated by individual pixels in the array enables addition and/or subtraction of individual pixel values, prior to their digitization, in the pixel array.

Systems and methods for adding or subtracting pixels

In general, in one embodiment, a starfield image as seen by an object is analyzed. Compressive samples are taken of the starfield image and, in the compressed domain, processed to remove noise. Stars in the starfield image are identified and used to determine an attitude of the object.

Attitude estimation by reducing noise with dragback

Attitude estimation in compressed domain

Attitude estimation with compressive sampling of starfield data

To provide cancelable biometrics, random projection transforms are used to produce transformed biometric data that may be used for authentication purposes. Each random projection transform provides a one-way or irreversible transformation such that the resulting transformed biometric data alone cannot be used to reconstruct the biometric data. Enrollment and backup transforms are produced based on enrollment biometric data. Authentication is possible by similarly transforming authentication biometric and then securely reconstructing the enrollment and authentication biometric data for comparison. In a similar manner, the enrollment and backup transforms may be used to reenroll biometric data when its corresponding transformed biometric data is compromised without requiring further user intervention.

Growing community of inventors

Newton, MA, United States of America

Yaron Rachlin