LIGHT CONTROL SYSTEMS AND METHODS

• US 20130293722A1
• Filed: 03/14/2013
• Published: 11/07/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/07/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Chia Ming Chen
• Original Assignee: Chia Ming Chen
• Inventors: Chen, Chia Ming
• Granted Patent: US 9,587,804 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/164
• 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 13/428 involving motion or position input signals, e.g. signals representing the rotation of an input controller or a player's arm motions sensed by accelerometers or gyroscopes
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/1093 using visible light
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/6045 for mapping control signals received from the input arrangement into game commands
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 14/02 by movement of light sources in vehicle head lamps F21S41/657
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 14/04 by movement of reflectors in vehicle head lamps F21S41/675
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 14/06 by movement of refractors in vehicle head lamps F21S41/635
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 23/0471 the sensor detecting the proximity, the presence or the movement of an object or a person
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 5/02 of prismatic shape F21V5/04 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: F21V 5/04 of lens shape
• CPC Class Codes: F21Y 2115/10 Light-emitting diodes [LED]
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 6/0096 the lights guides being of the hollow type
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/017 Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/28 Recognition of hand or arm movements, e.g. recognition of deaf sign language static hand signs G06V40/113
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/116 Visible light communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/11 for generating image signals from visible and infrared light wavelengths
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/56 provided with illuminating means
• CPC Class Codes: H05B 45/10 Controlling the intensity of the light

Abstract

Provided is a light-emitting device control system, comprising a beam steering mechanism that directs a beam of light at a first surface location, wherein an illumination region is formed at the first surface location in response to the directed beam of light, a sensor that recognizes a hand gesture at the illumination region; a processor that converts data related to the hand gesture into a command signal, and a controller that instructs the beam steering mechanism to move the illumination region to a second surface location in response to the command signal corresponding to the hand gesture.

Claims

1. A light-emitting device control system, comprising:

a beam steering mechanism that directs a beam of light at a first surface location, wherein an illumination region is formed at the first surface location in response to the directed beam of light;

a sensor that recognizes a hand gesture at the illumination region;

a processor that converts data related to the hand gesture into a command signal; and

a controller that instructs the beam steering mechanism to move the illumination region to a second surface location in response to the command signal corresponding to the hand gesture.

2. The light-emitting device control system of claim 1, further comprising a light source module that outputs the beam of light to the beam steering mechanism for directing the beam of light to at least one of the first surface location and the second surface location.

4. The control system of claim 2, wherein the light source module includes a control spot generator that generates a control spot for positioning in the illumination region.

5. The control system of claim 4, wherein the control spot generator comprises a partial filter having a filtered region that projects an image corresponding to the control spot at the illumination region.

6. The control system of claim 4, wherein the control spot generator includes a three-colored light emitter diode (LED) comprising a light pipe assembly having an exit port and three LEDs having various colors, wherein the light source module includes a lens, and wherein the light pipe assembly transports light from the three LEDs to the exit port of the light pipe assembly at a focal plane of the lens.

7. The control system of claim 4, wherein the control spot generator includes a control spot LED comprising a single or multi-colored LED at a focal plane of a light source of the light source module.

8. The control system of claim 4, wherein the sensor detects a presence of a hand making the hand gesture at the control spot, and wherein the beam steering mechanism moves the illumination region to the second surface location in response to the hand gesture.

10. The control system of claim 2, wherein the light source module comprises:

a plurality of LEDs that generate the beam of light;

a lens;

a control spot generator; and

narrow-beam optics that generate a narrow beam from the LEDs to maximize a throughput of light output via the lens.

11. The control system of claim 2, wherein the beam steering mechanism includes a two-axis gimbal on which are mounted the light source module and the sensor for steering a line of sight (LOS) of the light source module and the sensor module, and wherein the two-axis gimbal can be of a pitch-yaw type, a pitch-roll type, or yaw-roll type.

12. The control system of claim 1, wherein the beam steering mechanism comprises a mirror and a gimbal that adjusts gimbal angles of the mirror to steer a LOS of a light source generating the beam of light.

13. The control system of claim 12, wherein the gimbal includes an outer ring and an inner ring, and the beam steering mechanism includes a motor on the outer ring and rotates the inner ring about an axis, wherein the mirror is positioned in the inner ring, and the beam steering mechanism includes a motor that moves the mirror about an axis relative to the inner ring.

14. The control system of claim 1, wherein the beam steering mechanism comprises two refracted wedge prisms that rotate relative to each other, and wherein a deviation angle of the light beam from a horizontal axis is obtained by rotating the two wedge prisms relative to each other, and an azimuth angle of the light beam is obtained by rotating both wedge prisms in the same direction.

15. The control system of claim 1, wherein the beam steering mechanism includes a micro-electrical-mechanical system (MEMS) mirror array comprising a set of individual mirror elements, and wherein each mirror element has two axes of rotations.

16. The control system of claim 1, wherein the tracking and control sensor comprises a thermal imager having a linear or area focal plane array (FPA), and wherein the tracking and control system further comprises a scan mirror for the linear array.

17. The control system of claim 1, wherein the tracking and control sensor includes a lens that transmits both visible and thermal light, a thermal detector or array, and a visible FPA coupled to the thermal detector or array, the visible FPA positioned between the thermal detector or array and the lens.

18. The control system of claim 1, wherein the tracking and control sensor comprises a thermal sensor and a visible camera for capturing an image of a hand making the hand gesture and recognizing the hand gesture, and wherein the thermal sensor comprises a lens and a thermal detector.

22. The control system of claim 18, wherein the visible camera is outside the beam steering mechanism and the thermal sensor is inside of the beam steering mechanism.

23. The control system of claim 18, wherein the thermal sensor distinguishes a temperature of a hand at the illumination region from a background temperature, and the processor generates the command signal from thermal image data corresponding to the hand.

24. The control system of claim 1, wherein the sensor comprises a skin detection sensor and a three-colored light emitting diode (LED) that illuminates the hand gesture at the control spot at the illumination region, wherein the skin sensor senses the presence of a human hand by analyzing reflected light from the human hand.

25. The control system of claim 24, wherein the skin detection sensor comprises a multi-color LED source for illuminating human skin at the control spot and a radiometric calibrated camera assembly or radiometer that measures reflectance at a control spot at the illumination region from the reflected light of the LED source.

26. The control system of claim 25, wherein the multi-color LED source comprises a plurality of LEDs, each operating at a different wavelength, wherein two LEDs are near infrared (NIR) LEDs, the system further comprising a control spot generator at the exit port of a light-pipe assembly.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the light-pipe assembly comprises three input light pipes and an output light pipe, wherein an LED of the plurality of LEDs is at an entrance of one of the three input light pipes, the output light pipe is bonded to a blank filter position at a focal plane of the light source module, an exit port of the output light pipe faces the beamsplitter and a lens.

30. The control system of claim 26, wherein NIR images generated by the an imaging sensor of the skin detection sensor are employed to suppress or eliminate a hand gesture background, wherein the processor determines a ratio of NIR images provided by the two NIR LEDs to distinguish the hand gesture background from the hand gesture.

31. The control system of claim 1, further comprising a camera that captures an image at a control spot at the illumination region, the image including an image of the hand gesture and background data of the hand gesture.

32. The control system of claim 31, wherein the processor converts the data related to the hand gesture into the command signal by removing the background data of the hand gesture from the image, processing the image of the hand gesture, comparing the processed image of the hand gesture with a set of stored hand gesture images, and generating the control signal in response to a match between the processed image of the hand gesture and a stored hand gesture image.

33. The control system of claim 31, wherein the camera captures a plurality of images of a motion of the hand gesture, and wherein the processor converts the data related to the hand gesture into the command signal by subtracting images of the hand gestures to remove the background data from the images.

35. The control system of claim 1, further comprising a multi-face pyramid mirror that divides the focusing beam of the lens into equal focusing sub-beams and directs the sub-beams in different directions, and wherein the multi-face pyramid mirror is a three-face mirror that directs the sub-beams in three different directions.

36. The control system of claim 35, wherein a visible focal point array is positioned at a focus of a first sub-beam, a thermal detector or array is placed at a focus of a second sub-beam, and an LED or an exit port of a three-color LED light pipe is positioned at a focus of a third sub-beam.

37. The control system of claim 1, wherein the light-emitting device control system is constructed and arranged in an optical wireless communications network, and wherein the beam steering mechanism moves the illumination spot to a location for both illumination and optical wireless communications, the light of the illumination spot carrying data that is received by an optical wireless device positioned at the location of the illumination spot.

38. The control system of claim 1, wherein the light-emitting device control system is constructed and arranged in an optical wireless communications network, wherein the beam steering mechanism moves the illumination spot to a location, wherein the control system generates a transmitter beam spot that intersects at least a portion of the illumination spot, the transmitter beam spot including data that is received by a optical wireless device positioned at the first surface location of the illumination spot, wherein an optical wireless transmitter can is mounted at a light source platform, the transmitter beam spot and the illumination spot moving together from the first surface location to the second surface location.

39. The control system of claim 1, wherein the light-emitting device control system is constructed and arranged in a controller-free video game system that uses players'"'"' gestures and gesture motions as commands for the video game, the system including a plurality of visible-thermal dual-band cameras to capture the gestures, the cameras arranged in orthogonal directions to capture 3-dimensional gesture motions, wherein the illumination region provides lighting for a visible camera of the visible-thermal dual-band cameras.

40. The control system of claim 39, wherein the cameras include two cameras when a single player uses the controller-free video game system.

41. The control system of claim 39, wherein the cameras include three cameras when multiple players use the controller-free video game system.

3. (canceled)

9. (canceled)

19-21. -21. (canceled)

28-29. -29. (canceled)

34. (canceled)

42. A multi-spectral flashlight camera, comprising:

a pyramid mirror;

a light source;

two or more focal plane array (FPA) devices, each operating in a different light wave spectrum;

an aperture lens shared by the light source and the FPA devices at a foci of the lens, wherein light from the light source exits the aperture lens and illuminates a target, wherein reflected and emitted light from the target enters the aperture lens, wherein the pyramid mirror divides the received light so that a percentage of the received light enters an FPA device of the two or more FPA devices, and wherein the illumination area relates to an image corresponding to the FPA devices; and

processing electronics for image acquisition and processing.

44. The multi-spectral flashlight camera of claim 42, further comprising a filter wheel having multiple bandpass filters, and wherein the FPA devices include a visible band, a short wave infrared band, and a long wave infrared band.

43. (canceled)

45. A multi-spectral flashlight camera, comprising:

a pyramid mirror;

an LED light source;

a visible channel;

an uncooled thermal channel;

an aperture lens that is shared by the light source, the visible channel, and the uncooled thermal channel at a foci of the lens, wherein light from the light source exits the aperture lens and illuminates a target, and wherein the visible image is provided of the illuminated target, and wherein the thermal image is provided of the self-emission target; and

processing electronics for image acquisition and processing.

46. (canceled)

47. A method of controlling a light-emitting device, comprising:

generating a control spot in an illumination region, the illumination region positioned at a first surface location;

determining a hand gesture made at the control spot; and

moving the illumination region to a second surface location in response to the hand gesture.

49. A smart lamp, comprising:

a light source module that provides light for an illumination region at a surface location;

a control spot generator that generates a control spot for positioning in the illumination region and controlling the lamp;

a sensor that recognizes a hand gesture at the control spot; and

a processor that converts data related to the hand gesture into a command signal for moving the illumination spot to a different surface location and controlling the lamp.

50. The smart lamp of claim 49, further comprising:

a beam steering mechanism that directs a beam of light from the light source module at the surface location to form the illumination region, wherein an illumination region is formed at the surface in response to the directed beam of light; and

a controller that instructs the beam steering mechanism to move the illumination region to the different surface location or changing the brightness of the illumination region in response to the command signal.

51. A method for hand gesture recognition, comprising:

providing an illumination region at a first surface location;

presenting a control spot at the illuminated surface region;

positioning a hand at the control spot;

detecting a presence of the hand at the control spot;

generating a control signal corresponding to a gesture of the hand;

moving the illumination region to a second surface location response to the command signal; and

controlling a state of a lamp presenting the control spot.

48. The method of claim 51, wherein the hand gesture includes a first hand gesture that activates the light-emitting device in a first state, and a second hand gesture that generates a command to move the illumination region to the second surface location.

53. The method of claim 51, wherein generating the control signal comprises:

capturing an image at the control spot, the image including an image of the hand gesture and a background of the hand gesture;

removing the image of the background of the hand gesture from the image;

processing the image of the hand gesture;

comparing the processed image of the hand gesture with a set of stored hand gesture images; and

generating the control signal in response to a match between the processed image of the hand gesture and a stored hand gesture image.

52. (canceled)