System and method for collaborative analysis of data streams

• US 20070100851A1
• Filed: 11/01/2005
• Published: 05/03/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujifilm Business Innovation Corp. (Fujifilm Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Fuji Xerox Company Limited (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Denoue, Laurent, Lai, Cheng-Jia, Trevor, Jonathan, Golovchinsky, Gene
• Granted Patent: US 7,904,545 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention combine the flexibility of the computer in segmenting, indexing, and retrieving data with the strengths of people in analyzing scenes. They provide a mechanism that allows a group of analyzers at distributed locations to collaborate in generating pieces of semantic information of a data stream, integrates these pieces into a summary representation that can be used for subsequent computation, and allows related hypotheses and information requests to be presented back to the analyzers. This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention. Other features, aspects, and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the specification, the figures, and the claims.

Claims

1. A system to support collaborative data stream analysis, comprising:

one or more processors each operable to;

accept and/or process a stream of data into a plurality of objects; and

distribute the plurality of objects to one or more analyzers;

said one or more analyzers each operable to collect and process a subset of the plurality of objects from the one or more processors to generate metadata with reference to one or more information requests from one or more synthesizers;

one or more aggregators each operable to collect and integrate the metadata from the one or more analyzers into one or more summary representations; and

said one or more synthesizers each operable to;

create said one or more information requests related to the plurality of objects; and

provide the one or more information requests to the one or more analyzers.

2. The system according to claim 1, further comprising at least one of:

a registration component operable to register a new component into the system.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

the one or more processors, analyzers, aggregators, and synthesizers can communicate with each other via a plurality of software interfaces.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein:

each of the plurality of software interfaces can be a web service or an API.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

the stream of data can include at least one of;

a video stream, an audio stream, a sensor data stream, and a textual document.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

the one or more analyzers can be at one or more physical locations.

7. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

each of the one or more analyzers can be a person, an automatic agent, or a combination of the two.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

each of the one or more analyzers can be characterized by privileges, capabilities, expertise, performance, and history.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

the metadata can be in one or more forms of;

structured, semi-structured, freeform description, and statistical.

10. The system according to claim 9, wherein:

the metadata can include one or more of;

a categorization, a freeform description of a portion of the stream of data, and a set of keywords.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

each of the one or more summary representations can be one or more of;

an index, a statistical aggregation, a textual summary, and a database instance.

12. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

each of the one or more processors is further operable to recompose existing objects in the subset of the plurality of objects into one or more new objects.

13. The system according to claim 1, wherein:

each of the one or more analyzers is operable to generate the metadata either manually or via a software algorithm via at least one of;

pattern matching, data mining, and textual processing.

14. A method to support collaborative data stream analysis, comprising:

.

accepting and/or processing a stream of data into a plurality of objects;

distributing the plurality of objects to one or more analyzers distributed at one or more physical locations;

collecting and processing a subset of the plurality of objects to generate metadata with reference to one or more information requests via the one or more analyzers;

collecting and integrating the metadata from the one or more analyzers into one or more summary representations;

creating the one or more information requests related to the plurality of objects; and

providing the one or more information requests to the one or more analyzers.

15. The method according to claim 14, further comprising:

generating the metadata either manually or via a software algorithm using at least one of;

pattern matching, data mining, and textual processing.

16. The method according to claim 14, further comprising:

recomposing existing objects in a subset of the plurality of objects into one or more new objects.

17. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed cause a system to:

accept and/or process a stream of data into a plurality of objects;

distribute the plurality of objects to one or more analyzers distributed at one or more physical locations;

collect and process a subset of the plurality of objects to generate metadata with reference to one or more information requests via the one or more analyzers;

collect and integrate the metadata from the one or more analyzers into one or more summary representations;

create the one or more information requests related to the plurality of objects; and

provide the one or more information requests to the one or more analyzers.

18. A system to support collaborative data stream analysis, comprising:

means for accepting and/or processing a stream of data into a plurality of objects;

means for distributing the plurality of objects to one or more analyzers distributed at one or more physical locations;

means for collecting and processing a subset of the plurality of objects to generate metadata with reference to one or more information requests via the one or more analyzers;

means for collecting and integrating the metadata from the one or more analyzers into one or more summary representations;

means for creating said one or more information requests related to the plurality of objects; and

means for providing the one or more information requests to the one or more analyzers.