PHOTOGRAPH-BASED GAME

• US 20130053141A1
• Filed: 08/22/2011
• Published: 02/28/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Gurin, Nicolas, Perronnin, Florent C., Saunders, Craig John, Dabet, Sebastien
• Granted Patent: US 8,813,111 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 463/31
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/213 comprising photodetecting means, e.g. cameras, photodiodes or infrared cells A63F13/219, A63F13/655 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/332 using wireless networks, e.g. cellular phone networks
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/44 involving timing of operations, e.g. performing an action within a time slot
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/46 Computing the game score
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/655 by importing photos, e.g. of the player
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/75 Enforcing rules, e.g. detecting foul play or generating lists of cheating players
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/6009 for importing or creating game content, e.g. authoring tools during game development, adapting content to different platforms, use of a scripting language to create content
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/61 Score computation
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/69 Involving elements of the real world in the game world, e.g. measurement in live races, real video

Abstract

A system and a method for playing a photograph-based game are provided. The method includes establishing a communication link between a game playing system and one or more game playing devices, each of which is operated by a respective player. Game rules are presented to the player(s) on the respective game playing device(s). The game rules include at least one task for the submission of at least one photographic image. Provision is made for receiving a photographic image in the game playing system which has been submitted via the established link from the game playing device in response to the presented task. An image signature is computed for the submitted photographic image based on visual features extracted from the image and a relevance to the task is computed, based on the computed image signature. A score for the game is output for each player, based on the computed relevance of the submitted images for each of the tasks.

Claims

1. A method for playing a photograph-based game comprising:

establishing a communication link between a game playing system and at least one game playing device which is operated by a player;

providing for presenting of game rules to the player on the at least one game playing device, the game rules including at least one task for the submission of at least one photographic image;

for each of the at least one tasks;

providing for receiving a photographic image in the game playing system submitted via the established link from the game playing device;

computing an image signature for the submitted photographic image, the image signature comprising a multidimensional vector or graph which is a statistical representation of visual features extracted from patches of the photographic image; and

computing a relevance to the task, based on the computed image signature; and

outputting a score for the game for the player based on the computed relevance.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication link comprises a wireless link.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the presenting of game rules to the player comprises displaying a task on a screen of the game playing device.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the presenting of game rules comprises presenting a set of categories from which the player selects one of the presented categories as the task.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the presenting of game rules comprises presenting information for identifying an object to be photographed as the task.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the object comprises at least one of a product, a geographical location, a building, a type of animal, a logo, a person, a sporting event, and combinations thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the game rules require the submitted photographic image to have a date stamp which is later in time than a time at which a respective one of the tasks is provided.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the submitted photographic image is an image which has been captured by the game playing device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the game playing device includes a camera.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the rules include rules for capturing the photographic image with the camera.

11. The method of claim 1, further providing for a reward to be provided to one of the game players, based on the score for the game.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one task comprises a plurality of tasks.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the tasks are presented sequentially and a score is presented to the player based on the computed relevance before presenting a next of the tasks.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one game playing device comprises a plurality of game playing devices, each operated by a respective player, and the output score for the game is based on the computed relevance of images submitted by the plurality of players.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one game playing device comprises a mobile device.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing of the relevance to the task comprises computing a similarity of the image signature to an image signature for each of at least one comparison image.

16. A method for playing a photograph-based game comprising:

establishing a communication link between a game playing system and at least one game playing device which is operated by a player;

providing for presenting of game rules to the player on the at least one game playing device, the game rules including at least one task for the submission of at least one photographic image;

for each of the at least one tasks;

providing for receiving a photographic image in the game playing system submitted via the established link from the game playing device;

computing an image signature for the submitted photographic image, the image signature being a statistical representation of visual features extracted from patches of the photographic image; and

computing a relevance to the task, based on the computed image signature, the computing of the relevance to the task comprising classifying the image signature with a classifier which has been trained with image signatures for each of a set of relevant training images; and

outputting a score for the game for the player based on the computed relevance.

18. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium which stores instructions, which when executed by a computer, perform a method for playing a photograph-based game comprising:

establishing a communication link between a game playing system and at least one game playing device which is operated by a player;

providing for presenting of game rules to the player on the at least one game playing device, the game rules including at least one task for the submission of at least one photographic image;

for each of the at least one tasks;

providing for receiving a photographic image in the game playing system submitted via the established link from the game playing device;

computing an image signature for the submitted photographic image based on visual features extracted from the image, the computing of the image signature comprising modeling local descriptors extracted from the image using a mixture model to generate a corresponding image vector having vector elements that are indicative of parameters of mixture model components of the mixture model representing the extracted local descriptors of the image; and

computing a relevance to the task, based on the computed image signature; and

outputting a score for the game for the player based on the computed relevance.

19. (canceled)

20. A game playing system comprising:

memory which stores instructions for;

presenting of game rules to at least one player operating a communicatively-linked associated game playing device, the game rules including tasks for the submission of photographic images from the game playing device;

for each of the tasks;

providing for the player to pick one category label from a set of category labels that has not been triggered yet;

providing for receiving a photographic image from the game playing device;

providing for computing an image signature for the submitted photographic image the mage signature being in the form of a feature vector which is based on visual features extracted from the image; and

providing for computing a relevance to the task, based on the computed image signature and the category;

providing for outputting a score for the game for the player based on the computed relevance; and

providing for issuing a reward to at least one of the at least one player, based on the score for the game; and

a processor in communication with the memory for executing the instructions.

21. The system of claim 20, further comprising a plurality of the game playing devices.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the game playing devices are mobile devices.

23. A computer-implemented method for playing a photograph-based game comprising:

providing instructions for causing a representation of each of a set of categories to be displayed on a game playing device;

for each of a plurality of iterations;

providing instructions for receiving a player'"'"'s selection of one of the categories in the set which has not yet been selected from the game playing device,

for the player'"'"'s selected category, providing instructions for receiving a photographic image submitted by the game playing device;

providing instructions for computing, with a processor, an image signature for the submitted photographic image based on visual features extracted from the image; and

providing instructions for computing a relevance to the category, based on the computed image signature; and

providing instructions for outputting a score for the game, based on the computed relevance for each of a plurality of selected ones of the categories.

24. The computer-implemented method of claim 23, wherein the providing for receiving a photographic image submitted by the game playing device comprises providing for upload of a photographic image which is captured by a camera of the game playing device only after receiving the player'"'"'s selection of the one of the categories.