Method and apparatus for adaptive realtime system power state control

• US 20040081337A1
• Filed: 10/23/2002
• Published: 04/29/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Tsirkel, Aaron M., Huang, Wilson X.
• Granted Patent: US 7,251,350 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/118
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3231 Monitoring the presence, absence or movement of users
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/316 by observing the pattern of computer usage, e.g. typical user behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/34 involving the use of external additional devices, e.g. dongles or smart cards
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2139 Recurrent verification
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

Method and Apparatus of the present invention provides innovative real-time system power management with respect to user presence by using an image-capturing device and computer vision technology. The image-capturing device is to capture an image that includes an area in front of a computer system. The image is to be analyzed to determine the user presence. When it is determined that the user is not present, one or more components of the computer system is placed in a power saving mode.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

an image-capturing device; and

an image-processing module coupled to the image-capturing device, wherein the image-processing module is to analyze an image captured by the image capturing device to determine if the system is to be placed in a power saving mode.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the image-processing module is to analyze the image captured by the image-capturing device to detect biometric characteristics of a user.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the biometric characteristics includes a facial contour.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the image-processing module is to further analyze the image captured by the image-capturing device to determine presence of a user.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a power management module coupled to the image-processing module, wherein the image-processing module is to generate a first signal to be received by the power management module when it is determined that no user is present.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein, responsive to receiving the first signal from the image-processing module, the power management module is to place the system in the power saving mode.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the power management module is to place the system in the power saving mode by reducing power consumption of one or more components in the system.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the image-capturing device is to capture digital images.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the image-capturing device is integrated to a display coupled to the system.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the image captured by the image-capturing device is to include an area in front of the system.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the image-capturing device is to capture the image based on a sampling rate.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein when presence of a user in the image is determined and the system is in the power saving mode, the image-processing module is to generate a second signal to place the system in an active state.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the image-processing module is to analyze the image using a stored reference image.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the reference image is captured by the image-capturing device at an earlier time.

15. An apparatus, comprising:

an image-processing module to analyze an image to determine presence or absence of a user; and

a power management module coupled to the image-processing module to manage power consumption in response to signals generated by the image-processing module.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein when absence of the user is determined by the image-processing module a first signal is to be sent by the image-processing module to the power management module to reduce power consumption of one or more components of a computer system.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising an image-capturing device coupled to the image-processing module to capture the image to be analyzed by the image-processing module.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the image includes an area in front of a display coupled to the computer system.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the image-capturing device is to capture the image based on a selected sampling rate.

20. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the image-processing module is to further analyze the image to detect biometric characteristics of the user.

21. A method, comprising:

capturing an image including an area in front of a display coupled to a computer system;

analyzing the image to determine if a user is positioned in front of the display; and

placing one or more components of the computer system in a power saving mode when the user is not positioned in front of the display.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprising:

generating a signal to indicate that the computer system is to be placed in the power saving mode when it is determined that the user is not positioned in front of the display.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein analyzing the image comprises:

detecting if biometric characteristics of the user exists in the image.

24. The method of claim 21, wherein the image is captured using an image-capturing device coupled to the display.

25. A machine-readable medium including machine readable instructions that, if executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to perform a method comprising:

capturing an image including an area in front of a display coupled to the computer system using a digital image capturing device; and

analyzing the image to determine if the display is to be placed in a power saving mode.

26. The machine-readable medium of claim 25, wherein analyzing the image comprises:

determining if a user is present in front of the display; and

placing the display in the power saving mode when the user is not present in front of the display.

27. The machine-readable medium of claim 26, wherein determining if the user is present in front of the display comprises detecting if biometric characteristics of the user exists in the image.

28. The machine-readable medium of claim 27, wherein a detection threshold is used to detect if biometric characteristics of the user exist in the image.

29. The machine-readable medium of claim 26, wherein a presence threshold is used to determine if the user is present in front of the display.

30. The machine-readable medium of claim 25, wherein the image is to be analyzed to determine if the one or more components in the computer system is to be placed in the power saving mode.

33. The system of claim 30, wherein the biometric characteristics includes a facial contour.

34. The system of claim 30, further comprising an activity detection module coupled to the processor, the activity detection module is to monitor user'"'"'s activity to control the power consumption of the one or more components in the system.

35. The system of claim 34, wherein when no user'"'"'s activity is detected by the activity detection module during a predetermined period, the image-capturing module is to capture an image to be analyzed by the image-processing module.

31. A system, comprising:

a direct current (DC) source;

a processor coupled to the DC source;

an image-processing module coupled to the processor; and

an image-capturing device coupled to the image-processing module, wherein the image-processing module is to analyze an image captured by the image capturing device using biometric characteristics to control power consumption of one or more components in the system.

32. The system of claim 31, further comprising a power management module coupled to the image-processing module, wherein the power management module is to receive one or more signals from the image-processing module to control power consumption of one or more components in the system.