CONTEXT AWARE USER INTERFACE SYSTEM

• US 20130016113A1
• Filed: 07/12/2011
• Published: 01/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/12/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Adhikari, Suranjit, Friedlander, Steven
• Granted Patent: US 8,446,432 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/589
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text

Abstract

Methods and apparatus are provided for presenting image data to include a graphic element. In one embodiment a method includes acquiring image data from a display buffer of a device, analyzing the image data to identify active and passive regions of the image data and ranking passive regions to determine a confidence measure for each passive region. The method may further include modifying the image data for display on the device to include a graphic element, wherein the graphic element is presented in a passive region based on the ranking.

Claims

1. A method for presenting graphic elements for a display, the method comprising the acts of:

acquiring image data from a display buffer of a device;

analyzing the image data to identify active and passive regions of the image data;

ranking passive regions to determine a confidence measure for each passive region; and

modifying the image data for display on the device to include a graphic element, wherein the graphic element is presented in a passive region based on the ranking.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the image data is acquired from a frame buffer of the device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein acquiring image data includes segmenting the image data into the one or more images.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the image data is acquired prior to display by the device.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the image data is acquired during display by the device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the image data is buffered video data, including at least one of a graphic element and text data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the image data is image data for display as a user interface for on at least one of a mobile device, display device, and media player.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the image data includes at least one of corner detection and moving window histogram analysis to identify active and passive regions.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing image data includes sampling one of sequential and non-sequential frames of the image data.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein an active region includes one or more of image data with a high probability of text and image data exhibiting a variation of color components of varying degrees.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein passive region includes one or more of image data having a low probability of text and image data exhibiting a high correlation to particular color components.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein ranking passive regions includes cascade filtering of image regions to create color gradients and mean gradient values for the region.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein modifying image data of the display includes adding one or more graphic elements to the display output.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising modifying one or more of shape and presentation size of a graphic element based on characteristics of a passive region.

15. A computer program product stored on computer readable medium including computer executable code for presenting image data, the computer program product comprising:

computer readable code to acquire image data from a display buffer of a device;

computer readable code to analyze the image data to identify active and passive regions of the image data;

computer readable code to rank passive regions to determine a confidence measure for each passive region; and

computer readable code to modify the image data for display on the device to include a graphic element, wherein the graphic element is presented in a passive region based on the ranking.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the image data is acquired from a frame buffer of the device.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein acquiring image data includes segmenting the image data into the one or more images.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the image data is acquired prior to display by the device.

19. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the image data is acquired during display by the device.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the image data is buffered video data, including at least one of a graphic element and text data.

21. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the image data is image data for display as a user interface for on at least one of a mobile device, display device, and media player.

22. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein analyzing the image data includes at least one of corner detection and moving window histogram analysis to identify active and passive regions.

23. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein analyzing image data includes sampling one of sequential and non-sequential frames of the image data.

24. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein an active region includes one or more of image data with a high probability of text and image data exhibiting a variation of color components of varying degrees.

25. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein passive region includes one or more of image data having a low probability of text and image data exhibiting a high correlation to particular color components.

26. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein ranking passive regions includes cascade filtering of image regions to create color gradients and mean gradient values for the region.

27. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein modifying image data of the display includes adding one or more graphic elements to the display output.

28. The computer program product of claim 15, further comprising modifying one or more of shape and presentation size of a graphic element based on characteristics of a passive region.

29. A device comprising:

a display buffer; and

a processor coupled to the display buffer, the processor configured to

acquiring image data from the display buffer;

analyze the image data to identify active and passive regions of the image data;

rank passive regions to determine a confidence measure for each passive region; and

modify the image data for display on the device to include a graphic element, wherein the graphic element is presented in a passive region based on the ranking.

30. The device of claim 29, wherein the device relates to one or more of a display device, personal communication device, handheld computing device, and computing device in general.