Demographic information collection and content display based on demographic information

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10074098-B2
Application number	US-201313890086-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 8, 2013
Priority date	May 8, 2013
Publication date	Sep 11, 2018
Grant date	Sep 11, 2018

Abstract

One aspect of the disclosure relates to a digital signage display system. In one embodiment, the digital signage display system includes: a camera configured to capture an image frame; a service processor in communication to the camera; and a digital signage display. The service processor includes a processor and a non-volatile memory storing a firmware. The firmware is configured, when executed at the processor, to process the captured image frame, detect persons in the image frame, generate a demographic-map data structure, and send the demographic-map data structure to a server system. The demographic-map data structure contains demographic information of the persons detected in the image frame. The digital signage display is configured to receive a display content provided by the server system in response to the demographic-map data structure.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A digital signage display system, comprising:
a camera configured to capture an image frame;
a service processor in communication with the camera, the service processor comprising a processor, more than one network interface controller for performing network communications with different networks directly and a non-volatile memory storing a firmware, wherein the firmware is configured, when executed at the processor of the service processor, to
process the captured image frame;
detect persons in the image frame;
generate a demographic-map data structure, wherein the demographic-map data structure contains demographic information of the persons detected in the image frame and personal behavior data including duration at a scene of a person and attentiveness of the person, and wherein the attentiveness is determined by facing directions of the person in consecutive frames; and
send the demographic-map data structure to a server system; and

a digital signage display configured to receive a display content provided by the server system in response to the demographic-map data structure, the digital signage display comprising a display device,
wherein the server system comprises:
a demographic information server in communication with the service processor via a network, wherein the demographic information server, when executed at a processor of the server system, is configured to receive the demographic-map data structure from the service processor, to generate demographic information according to the demographic-map data structure, to identify demographic patterns and trends, and to predict times and locations at which demographic groups will be present based on the demographic patterns and trends, thus yielding predicted demographic information; and
a content server comprising a content manager module and a content storage module, wherein the content server is in communication with the service processor via the network and, when executed at a processor of the server system, is configured to request the demographic information from the demographic information server and to determine a program list to be displayed based on the predicted demographic information; wherein the content manager module manages contents to be displayed at each digital signage display and provides a uniform resource identifier for each specific content; and wherein the each digital signage display requests and downloads the each specific content from the content storage module by using the uniform resource identifier; and

wherein the content server, the service processor and the demographic information server are three wholly separate and distinct elements and the service processor is configured to send content management instructions directly to the content server to manage digital media content data stored in the content server;
wherein the firmware comprises a demographic information collector storing the digital image frame data to a frame queue, receiving the demographic-map data structure from one of at least two image processing engines, and sending the demographic-map data structure to the server system;
wherein the demographic information collector, when executed at the processor of the service processor, is configured to store the demographic-map data structure in a data queue, and when the data queue is full, to periodically send the demographic-map data structure in the data queue to the server system and periodically remove demographic-map data structure in the data queue; and
wherein each of the at least two image processing engines is executed at the processor of the service processor to perform different image processing algorithms, and is connected to the demographic information collector through an application programming interface (API).

2. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the firmware comprises:
a camera control module, when executed at the processor of the service processor, configured to control the camera to capture the image frame;
a video converter, when executed at the processor of the service processor, configured to convert the image frame to digital image frame data,
wherein each of the image processing engines, when executed at the processor of the service processor, is configured to retrieve the digital image frame data from the frame queue, to generate the demographic-map data structure according to the digital image frame data, and to send the demographic-map data structure to the demographic information collector.

3. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 2 , wherein the demographic information collector comprises an image-processing-engine interface, wherein the image-processing-engine interface defines a function to configure the image processing engine collecting information in the demographic-map data structure.

4. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the demographic-map data structure comprises personal attribute data, and wherein each of the image processing engines, when executed at the processor of the service processor, is configured to generate the personal attribute data by processing the digital image frame data corresponding to one image frame, and to generate the personal behavior data by comparing the personal attribute data corresponding to a plurality of image frames.

5. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the content server, when executed at the processor of the server system, is configured to store the digital media content data, to generate the program list of the digital media content data according to the demographic information, and to send the program list as the display content to the digital signage display via the network.

6. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the service processor is further configured to send demographic management instructions to the demographic information server to manage the demographic-map data structure stored in the demographic information server.

7. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the demographic information server comprises a data store storing the demographic information.

8. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the content server comprises:
the content storage module configured, when executed at the processor of the server system, to store the digital media content data; and
the content manager module configured, when executed at the processor of the server system, to request the demographic information from the demographic information server, to generate the program list according to the demographic information, and to send the program list as the display content to the digital signage display via the network.

9. The digital signage display system as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the network is a cloud network.

10. A non-transitory computer storage medium storing a firmware, wherein the firmware is configured, when executed at a processor of a service processor, to process an image frame captured by a camera;
detect persons in the image frame;
performing network communications of the service processor with different networks directly by more than one network interface controller of the service processor;
generate a demographic-map data structure, wherein the demographic-map data structure contains demographic information of the persons detected in the image frame and personal behavior data including duration at a scene of a person and attentiveness of the person, and wherein the attentiveness is determined by facing directions of the person in consecutive frames;
send the demographic-map data structure to a server sys

Assignees

• American Megatrends Inc

Inventors

• Maity Sanjoy
• Thomas Satheesh
• Parthiban Baskar
• Ayanam Varadachari Sudan
• Christopher Samvinesh
• Inbaraj Joseprabu

Classifications

• G06Q30/0201

  Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data · CPC title

• G06Q30/0251

  Targeted advertisements · CPC title

• G06Q30/0204 Primary

  Market segmentation · CPC title

• G06K9/00221

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06Q30/0269

  based on user profile or attribute · CPC title