Resource-responsive motion capture

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10222871-B2
Application number	US-201715641128-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 3, 2017
Priority date	Mar 15, 2013
Publication date	Mar 5, 2019
Grant date	Mar 5, 2019

Abstract

The technology disclosed relates to operating a motion-capture system responsive to available computational resources. In particular, it relates to assessing a level of image acquisition and image-analysis resources available using benchmarking of system components. In response, one or more image acquisition parameters and/or image-analysis parameters are adjusted. Acquisition and/or analysis of image data are then made compliant with the adjusted image acquisition parameters and/or image-analysis parameters. In some implementations, image acquisition parameters include frame resolution and frame capture rate and image-analysis parameters include analysis algorithm and analysis density.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of operating a motion-capture system responsive to available system resources, the method including:
assessing a level of resources available for performing at least one of acquiring and analyzing an image by benchmarking components of the motion-capture system, the benchmarking of the components including evaluating processing capabilities of the components;
adjusting, in response to the level of the resources assessed, one or more parameters, wherein the one or more parameters include a frame size and a frame capture rate;
capturing, by a camera of the motion-capture system, a sequence of digital image frames to acquire image data for an object of interest, and
analyzing the image data to detect the object of interest;
wherein at least one of the capturing or analyzing is performed in compliance with the one or more parameters as adjusted.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein:
analyzing the image data to detect the object of interest is performed compliant with at least one adjusted parameter of the one or more adjusted parameters, wherein the at least one adjusted parameter is an analysis algorithm or an analysis density.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein components of the motion-capture system include on-board components of a computer or external components in wired or wireless communication with the computer.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the benchmarking of the components includes evaluating a USB bus capacity of a channel that couples a component to a system board of the motion-capture system.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the processing capabilities of the components include at least a processor speed and a number of processor cores.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the processing capabilities of the components include at least one of a memory throughput and a bus speed.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the processing capabilities of the components include at least one of a graphics pipeline architecture, graphics memory availability, and an amount of cache memory.

8. The method of claim 1 , further including identifying, via a performance database, adjusted values of parameters for evaluated values of capacity parameters.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the benchmarking is performed repeatedly during a motion capture operation of the motion-capture system, so as to periodically assess the level of the resources available and adjust the one or more parameters.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the adjusting of the parameters further includes reducing the frame size by resampling to a lower resolution.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the analyzing of the image data further includes determining a characteristic of the object of interest.

12. The method claim 11 , wherein determining a characteristic of the object of interest includes identifying a position or a shape of the object of interest based on the analyzing of the image data.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein determining a characteristic of the object of interest includes identifying an orientation or trajectory.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the adjusting of the one or more parameters includes at least analyzing a reduced amount of image data per digital image frame.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions for operating a motion-capture system responsive to available system resources, the instructions which when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
assess a level of resources available for performing at least one of acquiring and analyzing an image by benchmarking components of the motion-capture system, the benchmarking of the components including evaluating processing capabilities of the components;
adjust, in response to the level of the resources assessed, one or more parameters, wherein the one or more parameters include a frame size and a frame capture rate;
acquire, from a sequence of digital image frames captured by a camera of the motion-capture system, image data for an object of interest, and
analyze the image data to detect the object of interest;
wherein at least one of the capturing or analyzing is performed in compliance with the one or more parameters as adjusted.

16. A system for operating a motion-capture system responsive to available resources, the system including:
one or more cameras configured to capture a sequence of digital image frames to acquire image data for an object of interest; and
hardware configured to perform:
assessing a level of resources available for performing at least one of acquiring and analyzing an image by evaluating processing capabilities of components in the motion-capture system;
adjusting, in response to the level of the resources assessed, one or more parameters, wherein the one or more parameters include a frame size and a frame capture rate;
acquiring, from the sequence of digital image frames captured by a camera of the one or more cameras, image data for an object of interest, and
analyzing the image data to detect the object of interest;
wherein at least one of the capturing or analyzing is performed in compliance with the one or more parameters as adjusted.

17. A motion capture device comprising hardware configured to perform:
assessing a level of resources available for performing at least one of acquiring and analyzing an image by evaluating processing capabilities of components in a motion-capture system;
adjusting, in response to the level of the resources assessed, one or more parameters, wherein the one or more parameters include a frame size and a frame capture rate;
acquiring, from a sequence of digital image frames captured by a camera of the motion-capture system, image data for an object of interest, and
analyzing the image data to detect the object of interest;
wherein at least one of the capturing or analyzing is performed in compliance with the one or more parameters as adjusted.

18. The method of claim 1 , further including: transmitting signals to one or more cameras, thereby activating or deactivating the one or more cameras.

19. The method of claim 1 , further including: transmitting signals to one or more cameras, thereby controlling camera settings including at least one of: a frame rate, an image quality, and a sensitivity.

20. The method of claim 1 , further including: translating camera images of a moving hand into a wire-frame or graphic depiction of the hand; and interpreting hand gestures as input used to control a separate visual output.

Assignees

• Leap Motion Inc

Inventors

• Holz David

Classifications

• G06F3/017 Primary

  Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures (interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883) · CPC title

• G06F3/005

  Input arrangements through a video camera · CPC title