Method and apparatus for extracting information from an array of hazardous material sensors

• US 20070143079A1
• Filed: 12/19/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Clearinghouse LLC (RPX Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nortel Networks Limited (Nortel Networks Corporation)
• Inventors: Duxbury, Guy, Meier, Rolf
• Granted Patent: US 7,467,069 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/189
• CPC Class Codes: G01T 7/00 Details of radiation-measuring instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/12 responsive to undesired emission of substances, e.g. pollution alarms
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 31/00 Predictive alarm systems characterised by extrapolation or other computation using updated historic data

Abstract

Information may be extracted from an array of relatively low sensitivity hazardous material sensors deployed, for example within a population center, by collecting identification information, such as video data, RFID data, proximity data, and IR data along with the hazardous material sensor reading. The identification information may then be used to identify objects in the vicinity of the hazardous material sensor at the time the reading was taken. By using identification data to identify an object, and then correlating sensor data readings for that object with other sensor data readings for the same object, as identified using previously collected identification information, a statistically more significant reading may be obtained for that particular object than would be obtainable by any one particular hazardous material sensor. Optionally the proximity of the object to the sensors may be used to weight the readings from the sensors.

Claims

1. A method of obtaining enhanced resolution from an array of low resolution hazardous material sensors, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving identification information associated with an object in a vicinity of a first low resolution hazardous material sensor;

receiving a first low resolution hazardous material sensor reading from the first low resolution hazardous material sensor

processing the identification information to determine an identity of the object; and

correlating the first low resolution hazardous material sensor reading with other low resolution hazardous material sensor readings for the same object based on the identity of the object, to obtain a statistically more significant collective sensor reading than may be obtained from one of the individual low resolution hazardous material sensor readings.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the identification information comprises video information, and wherein the step of processing the identification information comprises performing facial characteristic recognition on the video information.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the identification information comprises Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) information and wherein the step of processing the identification information comprises analyzing the RFID information.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the identification information comprises Infrared signal information, and wherein the step of processing the identification information comprises analyzing an infrared signature associated with the infrared signal information.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of receiving proximity information associated with the object.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the proximity information is a value of a distance between the object and the hazardous material sensor.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the proximity information is used to weight the hazardous material sensor reading during the step of correlating.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of correlating comprises adding the hazardous material sensor reading with other hazardous material sensor readings for the same object.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity of the object is an assigned identity.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity of the object is an actual identity.

11. A processing center, comprising:

a processor; and

control logic configured to execute on said processor, said control logic comprising first program instructions configured to implement identification software, said identification software being configured to receive as inputs identification information associated with an object from at least one identification sensor in a vicinity of a low resolution hazardous material sensor, and said identification software being configured to derive from the identification information an identity of the object; and

said control logic further comprising second program instructions configured to implement correlation processing software, said correlation processing software being configured to use the identity of the object to retrieve previous low resolution hazardous material sensor readings and use the new low resolution hazardous material sensor reading in connection with the previous low resolution hazardous material sensor readings to generate a correlated hazardous material sensor reading, said correlated hazardous material sensor reading having a statistically more significant value than may be obtained from one of the individual low resolution hazardous material sensor readings.

12. The processing center of claim 11, further comprising a database of said previous hazardous material sensor readings.

13. The processing center of claim 11, wherein the identification information comprises video information, and wherein the identification software is configured to perform facial characteristic recognition on the video information.

14. The processing center of claim 11, wherein identification information comprises Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) information, and wherein the identification software is configured to analyze RFID information.

15. The processing center of claim 11, wherein the identification information comprises Infrared signal information, and wherein the identification software is configured to derive an infrared signature associated with the infrared signal information.

16. The processing center of claim 11, further comprising a known objects database, and wherein the identification software is configured to characterize the identification information and look for characteristic features of the object, and is configured to use these characteristic features to key into the known objects database to determine the identity of the object.

17. The processing center of claim 16, wherein the identity of the object is a system identity value.

18. A sensor unit, said sensor unit comprising a low resolution hazardous material sensor, an identification device, and a processor, said processor being configured to coordinate acquisition of a reading from the low resolution hazardous material sensor with acquisition of identification information from the identification device.

19. The sensor unit of claim 18, wherein the identification device is a camera, and wherein the processor is configured to coordinate acquisition of the reading from the hazardous material sensor with acquisition of a video image from the camera.

20. The sensor unit of claim 18, wherein the identification device is an RFID sensor, and wherein the processor is configured to coordinate acquisition of the reading from the hazardous material sensor with acquisition of a reading from the RFID sensor.