USER ACTIVITY TRACKING SYSTEM AND DEVICE

• US 20150004998A1
• Filed: 06/28/2013
• Published: 01/01/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: PENNANEN, Juho, KYRL, Aapo
• Granted Patent: US 9,125,015 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2291 User-Defined Types; Storage management thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/027 using movement velocity, acceleration information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a system for tracking and recording movements of a mobile communication device that includes one or more movement sensors. The mobile communication device communicates sensor signals to the system, wherein the sensor signals are indicative of motion associated with activities to which the mobile communication device is exposed by its user. The sensor signals are pre-classified to generate the intermediate data, where the intermediate data is processed in one or more processors to generate indications of likely activities associated with the sensor signals, and an aggregate of the indications is computed to provide an analysis of activities associated with the sensor signals. The information indicating most likely activity types is then sent to the mobile communication device.

Claims

9. A method of using a system for tracking and recording movements of at least one mobile communication device including one or more movement sensors and a wireless interface, wherein the system includes a communication network for communicating with the at least one mobile communication device and computing hardware for processing data supplied in operation from the at least one mobile communication device, characterized in that the method includes:

(a) operating the at least one mobile communication device to communicate one or more sensor signals to the system, wherein the one or more sensor signals are indicative of motion associated with activities to which the at least one mobile communication device is exposed by its user;

(b) operating the computing hardware of the system to execute one or more software products for analysing the one or more sensor signals, wherein the computing hardware is operable to pre-classify the one or more sensor signals to generate intermediate data, and the intermediate data is thereafter processed in one or more processors to generate one or more indications of likely activities associated with the one or more sensor signals, and the computing hardware is operable to compute an aggregate of the one or more indications to provide an analysis of one or more activities associated with the one or more signals; and

(c) operating the computing hardware to send information indicating one or more most likely activity types to the at least one mobile communication device.

1. A system for tracking and recording movements of at least one mobile communication device including one or more movement sensors and a wireless interface, wherein the system includes a communication network for communicating with the at least one mobile communication device and computing hardware for processing data supplied in operation from the at least one mobile communication device, characterized in that

the at least one mobile communication device is operable to communicate one or more sensor signals to the system, wherein the one or more sensor signals are indicative of motion associated with activities to which the at least one mobile communication device is exposed by its user;

the computing hardware of the system is operable to execute one or more software products for analysing the one or more sensor signals, wherein the computing hardware is operable to pre-classify the one or more sensor signals to generate intermediate data, and the intermediate data is thereafter processed in one or more processors to generate one or more indications of likely activities associated with the one or more sensor signals, and the computing hardware is operable to compute an aggregate of the one or more indications to provide an analysis of one or more activities associated with the one or more signals; and

the computing hardware is operable to send information indicating one or more most likely activity types to the at least one mobile communication device.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the one or more processors are configured to process the one or more sensor signals substantially in parallel, wherein the one or more processors are mutually specialized in identifying characteristics of the one or more signals corresponding to one or more activities to which the one or more processors are dedicated.

3. A system as claimed in claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the system is operable to generate a temporal log of activities experienced by the at least one mobile communication device.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the at least one mobile communication device is implemented by way of at least one of:

a personal computer, a portable media device, a smart phone, a wrist-worn phone, a phablet, a mobile telephone, a tablet computer.

5. A system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that one or more sensors of the at least mobile communication device are implemented using at least one of:

a gyroscopic angular sensor, an accelerometer, a GPS position sensor, cellular positioning sensor , a magnetometer, a microphone, a camera, a temperature sensor.

6. A system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the one or more software products are operable to implement when executed on the computing hardware at least one of:

(a) a supervised or semisupervised classification analysis of information included in the one or sensor signals; and

(b) a heuristic analysis of information included in the one or more sensor signals.

7. A system as claimed in claim 6, characterized in that the supervised or semisupervised classification algorithms can use as input the amplitudes of the frequency components of the information included in the one or more sensor signals, and the output of the classification algorithms are estimated probabilities of different activities, conditional on the sensor signals.

8. A system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the at least one mobile communication device includes a data processor for executing at least one mobile software application thereat, wherein the at least one mobile software application is operable to cause a graphical user interface of the at least one mobile communication device to present analyzed activity results provided from the computing hardware in a form of at least one timeline, wherein different analyzed activities are represented by a plurality of mutually different symbols in respect of the at least one timeline.

10. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the method includes configuring the one or more processors to process the one or more sensor signals substantially in parallel, wherein the one or more processors are mutually specialized in identifying characteristics of the one or more signals corresponding to one or more activities to which the one or more processors are dedicated.

11. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the method includes operating the system to generate a temporal log of activities experienced by the at least one mobile communication device.

12. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the method includes arranging for the at least one mobile communication device to be implemented by way of at least one of:

a personal computer, a portable media device, a smart phone, a wrist-worn phone, a phablet, a mobile telephone, a tablet computer.

13. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the method includes implementing the one or more sensors of the at least mobile communication device using at least one of:

a gyroscopic angular sensor, an accelerometer, a GPS position sensor, cellular, positioning sensor, a magnetometer, a microphone, a camera, a temperature sensor.

14. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the one or more software products are operable to implement when executed on the computing hardware at least one of:

(a) a supervised or semisupervised classification analysis of information included in the one or sensor signals;

; and

(b) a heuristics analysis of information included in the one or more sensor signals.

16. A method as claimed in claim 14, characterized in that the supervised or semisupervised classification algorithms can use as input the amplitudes of the frequency components of the information included in the one or more sensor signals, and the output of the classification algorithms are estimated probabilities of different activities, conditional on the sensor signals.

17. A software product recorded on non-transitory machine-readable data storage media, characterized in that the software product is executable upon computing hardware for implementing a method as claimed in claim 9.

18. A software product as claimed in claim 17, characterized in that the software product is downloadable from a software application store to the portable device.

19. A mobile communication device for use when implementing the system as claimed in claim 1.

16-1. A method as claimed in claim 9, characterized in that the method includes arranging for the at least one mobile communication device to include a data processor for executing at least one mobile software application thereat, wherein the at least one mobile software application is operable to cause a graphical user interface of the at least one mobile communication device to present analyzed activity results provided from the computing hardware in a form of at least one timeline, wherein different analyzed activities are represented by a plurality of mutually different symbols in respect of the at least one timeline.