Sony Corporation

Sony Electronics Inc

Sony United Kingdom Limited

Sony Group Corporation

Yoshihiro Murakami

Katsumi Tahara

Takuya Kitamura

Kanji Mihara

Ming-Chang Liu

Pingshan Li

Yutaka Yoneda

Hiromi Yoshinari

Mark Allen Robertson

Hidenori Kushida

Earl Quong Wong

Fumiaki Henmi

Soroj Triteyaprasert

Toru Kurata

Takao Inoue

Minoru Kawahara

Makibi Nakamura

Tetsuo Kani

Makoto Toyoshima

Mamoru Sugiura

James Hedley Wilkinson

Masatoshi Takashima

Shoji Kosuge

Shigeto Funado

Kenji Uehara

Hiroshi Mori

Takashi Kojima

Takao Abe

Akira Matsui

Eric D Edwards

Mitsutoshi Shinkai

Yasuo Iwasaki

Hiroshi Nakano

Hideki Koyanagi

Kazuki Aisaka

Osamu Matsunaga

Haruo Togashi

Takao Fukui

Hitoshi Sakamoto

Satoshi Miyazawa

Kazutoshi Nomoto

Tetsuya Iwamoto

Nobuhiro Chiba

Atsuo Yada

Takashi Sasaya

Masataka Mukai

Shigeo Fujishiro

Yasuaki Tomiyama

Akihiko Shoda

Toshiaki Sueoka

Maikibi Nakamura

Shoji Tsushimi

Bunichi Ohana

Yoshihisa Segawa

Kazuko Segawa

The present disclosure relates to an inspection apparatus, a sensing apparatus, a sensitivity control apparatus, an inspection method, and a program that perform inspection with improved accuracy. The inspection apparatus includes a detection section for detecting a plurality of different wavelength region components of ambient light reflected from an inspection target to be inspected, and a control section for controlling the sensitivity of each of the different wavelength region components. The control section controls the sensitivity by calculating a histogram indicating the detection level in every wavelength region of light reflected from the inspection target that is detected by the detection section, and determining, based on histograms of particular spectroscopic components, whether or not the sensitivity is properly set for the detection section. The present technology is applicable, for example, to an inspection apparatus that inspects vegetation.

Inspection apparatus, sensing apparatus, sensitivity control apparatus, inspection method, and program with pixel sensitivity control

The present technology relates an inspection apparatus, an inspection method and a program by which accurate measurement light correction can be performed. The inspection apparatus calculates a correction gain of a spectrum based on reference spectral information, under a reference light source, of a reference reflector plate having a characteristic according to an inspection object and measurement spectral information of the reference reflector plate obtained by sensing under a measurement light source, and corrects measurement spectral information of the inspection object obtained by the sensing under the measurement light source based on the calculated correction gain. The present technology can be applied, for example, to a vegetation inspection apparatus that measures a vegetation index of a normalized vegetation index (NDVI) or the like.

Inspection apparatus, inspection method, and program

A method of improving accuracy and reliability of motion estimation is described herein. In one aspect, a 2D neighborhood of phase correlation peak is approximated with an outer-product of two 1D vectors to eliminate the sub-pixel error. In another aspect, estimation of reliability is improved. In yet another aspect, two-pass phase correlation is implemented to eliminate sub-pel motion bias.

Method to improve accuracy and reliability of motion estimated with phase correlation

The present invention provides a transcoder having a MPEG decoder and a MPEG encoder, for changing a GOP structure and the bit rate of an encoded bitstream obtained as a result of an encoding process. The MPEG encoder receives a past encoding parameters generated at a past encoding process as a history information, and performs a present encoding process by using the past encoding parameters selectively so that the present encoding process is optimized. Furthermore, the encoder describe the past encoding parameters into the encoded bitstream as the history information so as to reuse the history information in advance encoding process. The picture quality of the video data does not deteriorate even if decoding and encoding processes are carried out repeatedly by the transcoder.

Transcoding system using encoding history information

A method and system to improve the performance of phase correlation motion estimation for low-bit-precision implementation are described herein. Phase correlation uses the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) with operations with infinite-precision constants. Since physical implementations use finite-precision arithmetic, there is some loss in precision relative to the ideal infinite-precision case. In low-complexity implementations, it is desirable to use as few bits as possible, and if the precision is too low, the performance of traditional phase correlation suffers. A pre-processing technique is applied to the data prior to taking the FFT, which minimizes the negative effects of finite precision in the FFT and allows high quality results from phase correlation. The pre-processing step is a content-dependent contrast adjustment that maps the range of the input images' pixel values to the range of input values for the FFT. There is no post-processing required after the FFT to compensate for the pre-processing step.

Method to increase the accuracy of phase correlation motion estimation in low-bit-precision circumstances

Phase correlation is an established method for computing motion which relies on the ability to find peaks in a computed phase correlation surface. Two methods to improve the ability to detect peaks in the phase correlation surface are described herein. The first method applies a theoretically-derived and spatially-varying gain to the phase correlation surface. The gain compensates for peaks whose amplitudes have been decreased due to windowing effects; such effects are unavoidable in phase correlation. The second method uses concepts from matched filters to improve detection of peaks whose amplitudes are diminished due to a spreading of the peak energy into surrounding positions in the phase correlation surface. Peak detection filters allow such low-amplitude peaks to be properly detected. It is possible to use only the first method, or only the second method or both methods combined.

Method to improve detection of motion with phase correlation

A super-resolution image is generated from a sequence of low resolution images. In one embodiment, the image shift information is measured for each of the low resolution images using an image stabilization component of an imaging device. The shift information is used to generate the super-resolution image. In another embodiment, the blurs are calculated for each of the low resolution images and are used to generate the super-resolution image.

Method and apparatus for super-resolution imaging using digital imaging devices

Disclosed is a face recognition apparatus for previously registering a face image of a person, receiving a moving image in which face identification is intended to be performed, and performing face recognition in the received moving image. The apparatus includes the following elements. A face registration unit registers the face of a person as an image. A face detection unit detects a face in a frame of an input moving image. A face tracking unit tracks the detected face in frames of the input moving image. A face identification unit compares the detected face, which is being tracked by the face tracking unit, with the registered face registered in the face registration unit to identify the face. A stabilization unit stabilizes the result of face identification by the face identification unit.

Apparatus and method for face recognition and computer program

An imaging system generates a picture depth map from a pair of reduced resolution images. The system captures two full resolution images, receives image reduction image information and creates two reduced resolution images. The system computes a blur difference between the two reduced resolution images at different image locations. The system calculates the depth map based on the blur difference between the two reduced resolution images at different image locations.

Reduced hardware implementation for a two-picture depth map algorithm

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yoshihiro Murakami