Patent application number | Description | Published |
20110010093 | METHOD FOR ENCOURAGING LOCATION AND ACTIVITY LABELING - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for location labeling. During operation, the system collects contextual information recorded by one or more components located on a computing device associated with a user, and determines whether the computing device is stationary based on collected information. Responsive to the computing device being stationary, the system allows the user to provide a location label. | 01-13-2011 |
20110022443 | EMPLOYMENT INFERENCE FROM MOBILE DEVICE DATA - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for inferring a user's activity. During operation, the system collects contextual information recorded by a plurality of components located on a mobile device associated with the user. The system then extracts the user's behavior pattern based on the collected contextual information, and determines whether the user is engaged in an employment-related activity. | 01-27-2011 |
20110039522 | VENUE INFERENCE USING DATA SENSED BY MOBILE DEVICES - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for determining venue information associated with a mobile device user. During operation, the system collects contextual information recorded by one or more sensors located on the mobile device and extracts a behavior pattern of the user as a function of time and/or an environmental indicator based on the collected contextual information. The system then compares the behavior pattern and/or the environmental indicator with known behavior patterns and/or environmental indicators associated with a number of venues stored in a database, and determines a venue associated with the user based at least on the comparison. | 02-17-2011 |
20110054834 | DETERMINING USER COMPASS ORIENTATION FROM A PORTABLE DEVICE - Apparatus and methods are provided for determining a person's compass orientation from data generated by one or more sensors embedded within a portable device transported by the person. Such sensors may include an accelerometer, a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, a magnetometer (e.g., a compass), a barometer, etc. In some scenarios (e.g., when the person is walking), the person's initial orientation is directly determined and is used to calculate an initial orientation delta describing a difference between the person's initial orientation and an initial orientation of the device. In other scenarios, the person's current orientation is calculated based on an initial orientation of the device and a known or assumed orientation delta. Later in time, the orientation delta can be applied to the device's current orientation to determine the person's current orientation. As events involving the person and/or the device are observed, an orientation delta may be updated. | 03-03-2011 |
20110112890 | SENSOR-INTEGRATED MIRROR FOR DETERMINING CONSUMER SHOPPING BEHAVIOR - A mirror system includes an image sensor coupled to a mirror, and gathers consumer shopping preferences for merchandise items. During operation, the system gathers one or more sequential images, from the image sensor, of a consumer wearing a first wearable merchandise item in front of the image sensor. Next, the system identifies in the one or more sequential images a first merchandise item being worn by the consumer. Then, the system determines a demographic group associated with the consumer, and detects behavior patterns for the consumer, wherein the behavior pattern indicates an interest level of the consumer for the identified merchandise item. The system then determines a mapping between the identified consumer demographic group and an interest level for the identified merchandise item, and produces a model which encodes the mapping. | 05-12-2011 |
20110112992 | OPPORTUNISTIC FULFILLMENT OF TASKS BY SUGGESTIONS FROM A PERSONAL DEVICE - A computer tasking system has at least one sensor arranged to provide current location data for a user, an environment module to determine venues local to the user, a data repository having tasking data, and a recommendation module to analyze the current location data, the venues and the tasking data to produce a tasking recommendation for the user. A computer-controlled method of making recommendations of tasks includes receiving situational data from at least one sensor at a computer, accessing a repository of tasking data, determining, based upon the situational data and the tasking data, if an opportunity exists for task fulfillment, and making a recommendation to a user regarding the task fulfillment based upon the opportunity through a user interface. A shared task fulfillment system has a central hub consisting of a device that provides a user interface for entering a request for task fulfillment, the central hub comprising, a repository to store the request, a network interface to allow user devices to access the central hub, a processor to receive communications through the network interface and the user interface to update the repository and communicate with user devices, and a network of users having user devices. | 05-12-2011 |
20110276523 | MEASURING DOCUMENT SIMILARITY BY INFERRING EVOLUTION OF DOCUMENTS THROUGH REUSE OF PASSAGE SEQUENCES - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for estimating document similarity. During operation, the system selects a collection of documents which includes a first set of passages, constructs a passage-sequence model based on the first set of passages, receives a new document which includes a second set of passages, and determines a sequence of operations associated with the new document in relation to the collection of documents based on the constructed passage-sequence model. | 11-10-2011 |
20110316845 | SPATIAL ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates interaction between two entities located away from each other. The system includes a virtual reality system, an augmented reality system, and an object-state-maintaining mechanism. During operation, the virtual reality system displays an object associated with a real-world object. The augmented reality system displays the object based on a change to the state of the object. The object-state-maintaining mechanism determines the state of the object and communicates a state change to the virtual reality system, the augmented reality system, or both. A respective state change of the object can be based on one or more of: a state change of the real-world object; a user input to the virtual reality system or the augmented reality system; and an analysis of an image of the real-world object. | 12-29-2011 |
20120130806 | CONTEXTUALLY SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY BASED ADVERTISING - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates contextually specific opportunity-based advertising. During operation, the system collects contextual information associated with a consumer, and determines a current activity and/or a future activity in which the consumer is engaged based on the contextual information. The system then predicts one or more upcoming advertisement opportunities associated with the consumer based on the determined activities, and presents the predicted opportunities to one or more advertisers, thereby allowing the advertisers to determine a bid amount for presenting an advertisement at the predicted opportunities. The system further selects at least one advertisement to present based on one or more of the following: the bid amount, the collected contextual information, an occurrence probability of the predicted advertisement opportunities, content of the advertisement, metadata associated with the advertisement; and presents the advertisement to the consumer. | 05-24-2012 |
20120226969 | SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY FILLING IN PAPER FORMS WITH ELECTRONIC DATA - Embodiments of the disclosed technology provide a system and method for automatically filling paper form with electronic data. The system receives from a user a scanned image of a paper form that includes a plurality of fields. The system then retrieves a schema map that maps the plurality of fields in the paper form to a plurality of fields in an electronic data record associated with the user. Next, the system retrieves data values of the fields in the electronic data record based on the schema map. The system also synthesizes the retrieved data values and the scanned image to create an image of the paper form in which the fields are filled with the retrieved data values. | 09-06-2012 |
20130063560 | COMBINED STEREO CAMERA AND STEREO DISPLAY INTERACTION - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates interaction between a stereo image-capturing device and a three-dimensional (3D) display. The system comprises a stereo image-capturing device, a plurality of trackers, an event generator, an event processor, and a 3D display. During operation, the stereo image-capturing device captures images of a user. The plurality of trackers track movements of the user based on the captured images. Next, the event generator generates an event stream associated with the user movements, before the event processor in a virtual-world client maps the event stream to state changes in the virtual world. The 3D display then displays an augmented reality with the virtual world. | 03-14-2013 |
20130218825 | AUTOMATICALLY TRIGGERING PREDICTIONS IN RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS BASED ON AN ACTIVITY-PROBABILITY THRESHOLD - A recommender system determines a probability threshold for an activity-prediction model, and uses the probability threshold to predict whether a user is performing a target activity. To determine the probability threshold, the system computes a set of activity probabilities based on contextual information for a set of historical activities, and based on an activity-prediction model for a target activity. The system then compares a set of probability thresholds with the set of activity probabilities to determine a prediction success rate for each probability threshold. The system computes a utility score for each probability threshold based on the prediction success rates and a utility function, and selects a probability threshold whose utility score is optimal amongst the utility scores of the set of thresholds and greater than or equal to a baseline utility score. The system then assigns the probability threshold to the activity-prediction model. | 08-22-2013 |
20130227584 | LONG-TERM RESOURCE PROVISIONING WITH CASCADING ALLOCATIONS - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for provisioning physical resources shared by a plurality of jobs. During operation, the system establishes resource-usage models for the jobs, ranks the jobs based on quality of service (QoS) requirements associated with the jobs, and provisions the jobs for a predetermined time interval in such a way that any unused reservations associated with a first subset of jobs having higher QoS rankings are distributed to other remaining jobs with preference given to a second subset of jobs having a highest QoS ranking among the other remaining jobs. Provisioning the jobs involves making reservations for the jobs based on the resource-usage model and corresponding QoS requirements associated with the jobs. | 08-29-2013 |
20140064107 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR FEATURE-BASED ADDRESSING - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for computing an address for communicating with a partner. During operation, the system collects data that represents one or more features of a subject of interest to the partner. The system then extracts the one or more features of the subject from the collected data by performing computations with the collected data. Subsequently, the system computes an address for communicating with the partner based on the extracted one or more features. | 03-06-2014 |
20140071133 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ANALYZING SEQUENTIAL DATA BASED ON SPARSITY AND SEQUENTIAL ADJACENCY - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for generating a classifier to detect patterns in a data sequence. During operation, the system receives the data sequence, which represents a sequence of measurements of a phenomenon. The system transforms the data sequence into a feature sequence that is of a higher dimensionality than a dimensionality of the data sequence, and the feature sequence is a sequence of feature vectors each created from contiguous members of the data sequence. Next, the system generates a graph where each node of the graph corresponds to a feature vector. The system converts the generated graph into a two-dimensional graph. Subsequently, the system displays, to a user, the two-dimensional graph. The system receives user input indicating that a region of the two-dimensional graph corresponds to a pattern associated with the feature sequence, and then generates a classifier based on the received user input. | 03-13-2014 |
20140320529 | VIEW STEERING IN A COMBINED VIRTUAL AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEM - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for assisting view-steering from a remote client machine. During operation, the system receives, at a local client from a collaboration server, a view-synchronization request for synchronizing a local scene displayed on the local client with a remote scene displayed on the remote client; generates, at the local client, a view-steering widget based on the view-synchronization request; and displays the view-steering widget on top of the local scene, thereby facilitating a local user of the local client to update the local scene displayed on the local machine in order to match the local scene to at least a portion of the remote scene displayed on the remote client machine. | 10-30-2014 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090116698 | Intelligent fashion exploration based on clothes recognition - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for recognizing and classifying clothes. During operation, the system captures at least one image of a clothing item. The system further determines a region on the captured image which corresponds to a torso and/or limbs. The system also determines at least one color composition, texture composition, collar configuration, and sleeve configuration of the clothing item. Additionally, the system classifies the clothing item into at least one category based on the determined color composition, texture composition, collar configuration, and sleeve configuration. The system then produces a result which indicates the classification. | 05-07-2009 |
20090187782 | INTEGRATED ENERGY SAVINGS AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS IN DATA CENTERS - A power control system in a data center has a plurality of physical servers, each server having a local controller, at least one virtual server coupled to at least some of the physical servers, and a central controller to control task loading on the physical servers through the virtual servers. A method of controlling power consumption in a data center includes receiving inputs from local controllers residing on loads, the inputs including data about power consumption on the loads, receiving as an input at least one quality of service requirement, and allocating tasks to at least one server based upon the quality of service and the power consumption on the loads. | 07-23-2009 |
20090204370 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENABLING EXTENSIBILITY IN SENSING SYSTEMS - One embodiment of the present invention provides a method and apparatus for enabling extensibility in sensing systems. The distributed sensing system comprises a number of sensor nodes, a device database, a sensing module registry, a sensing needs monitor, and an automatic composer. The device database is in communication with at least one sensor node and configured to maintain physical information on at least one sensor node. The sensing module registry is configured to maintain a registry of a number of software modules that are available for extracting information from sensor data. The sensing needs monitor is configured to maintain a list of context pairs that represent a number of sensing needs of a sensing application. The automatic composer is configured to generate a composition of software modules, at runtime, to realize the sensing needs of users and applications. | 08-13-2009 |
20100005105 | METHOD FOR FACILITATING SOCIAL NETWORKING BASED ON FASHION-RELATED INFORMATION - One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating social networking based on fashion-related information. During operation, the system receives fashion-related information from a user. Next, the system extracts the user's fashion preferences from the received information and compares the user's fashion preference with other users' fashion preferences. Finally, the system groups users based on similarity of their fashion preferences. | 01-07-2010 |
20130246313 | INTEGRATED ENERGY SAVINGS AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS IN DATA CENTERS - A computer-controlled method of determining costs of power consumption in a data center includes monitoring power consumption for a customer, determine a cost of the power consumption for the customer, adjusting a cost of operation for the customer to include the cost of power consumption to produce an adjusted cost of operation for the customer, and comparing the adjusted cost of operation for the customer to a price for the customer. | 09-19-2013 |