Identifying IoT devices/objects/people using out-of-band signaling/metadata in conjunction with optical images

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9400943-B2
Application number	US-201414448880-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 31, 2014
Priority date	Aug 2, 2013
Publication date	Jul 26, 2016
Grant date	Jul 26, 2016

Abstract

The disclosure relates to identifying an object associated with a nearby Internet of Things (IoT) device. In an aspect, a device receives identifying information associated with the nearby IoT device, detects a nearby object in a field of view of a camera application, determines whether or not the nearby object is associated with the nearby IoT device based on the received identifying information, and based on the nearby object being associated with the nearby IoT device, determines that the nearby object corresponds to the object associated with the nearby IoT device.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for identifying an object associated with a nearby Internet of Things (IoT) device, comprising:
receiving identifying information associated with the nearby IoT device;
detecting a nearby object in a field of view of a camera application;
determining whether or not the nearby object is associated with the nearby IoT device based on the received identifying information matching information associated with the nearby object detected by the camera application in the field of view of the camera application; and
based on the nearby object being associated with the nearby IoT device, correlating the nearby object with information associated with the object associated with the nearby IoT device.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
creating an indication to identify the object associated with the nearby IoT device.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the creating comprises:
transmitting a beacon signal to one or more nearby IoT devices, the one or more nearby IoT devices including the nearby IoT device.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the information associated with the nearby object comprises a beacon signal.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the beacon signal comprises a sound beacon or a light beacon, and wherein the received identifying information comprises an indication of a type of the beacon signal and a frequency or color of the beacon signal.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying information comprises temperature information of the object associated with the nearby IoT device, and wherein the determining whether or not the nearby object is associated with the nearby IoT device comprises:
determining a temperature of the nearby object; and
determining whether or not the temperature information is within a threshold of the temperature of the nearby object,
wherein the correlating comprises determining that the nearby object corresponds to the object associated with the nearby IoT device based on the temperature information being within the threshold of the temperature of the nearby object.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the temperature of the nearby object is determined based on a position of the nearby IoT device relative to the nearby object.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying information comprises pattern information of the nearby IoT device, and wherein the determining whether or not the nearby object is associated with the nearby IoT device comprises:
determining a pattern of the nearby IoT device; and
determining whether or not the pattern information matches the pattern of the nearby IoT device,
wherein the correlating comprises determining that the nearby object corresponds to the object associated with the nearby IoT device based on the pattern information matching the pattern of the nearby IoT device.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying information comprises a spatial orientation of the nearby IoT device, and wherein the determining whether or not the nearby object is associated with the nearby IoT device comprises:
determining a spatial orientation of the nearby object; and
determining whether or not the spatial orientation of the nearby IoT device matches the spatial orientation of the nearby object,
wherein the correlating comprises determining that the nearby object corresponds to the object associated with the nearby IoT device based on the spatial orientation of the nearby IoT device matches the spatial orientation of the nearby object.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the spatial orientation of the nearby object is determined based on a position of the nearby IoT device relative to the nearby object and/or gravity.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying information is received out-of-band.

12. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving the information associated with the object associated with the nearby IoT device; and
correlating the nearby object to the information associated with the object.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the correlating comprises tagging the nearby object with the information associated with the object in a picture or video of the object associated with the nearby IoT device.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the object associated with the nearby IoT device is a human, and wherein the received identifying information comprises contact information of the human.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the object associated with the nearby IoT device comprises the nearby IoT device.

16. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
based on the nearby object not being associated with the nearby IoT device, ignoring the identifying information associated with the nearby IoT device.

17. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving identifying information associated with a second nearby IoT device, wherein the second nearby IoT device is associated with a second nearby object that is not in a field of view of the camera application; and
ignoring the identifying information associated with the second nearby IoT device.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the camera application determines that the second nearby object is not in the field of view of the camera application based on not detecting a match between the identifying information associated with the second nearby IoT device and any nearby object detected in the field of view of the camera application.

19. The method of claim 1 , wherein the camera application comprises a camera application of a user equipment.

20. The method of claim 19 , wherein the nearby IoT device comprises an IoT device within peer-to-peer wireless communications range of the user equipment.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein the receiving comprises receiving a plurality of types of subject metadata associated with each of a plurality of nearby IoT devices associated with a plurality of objects, the plurality of objects including the object associated with the nearby IoT device, and wherein the plurality of types of subject metadata are the same for each of the plurality of nearby IoT devices.

22. The method of claim 21 , further comprising:
determining a variance of each of the plurality of types of subject metadata across the plurality of nearby IoT devices;
ranking each of the plurality of types of subject metadata based on the determined variance; and
generating weightings of a plurality of subject identification methods corresponding to the plurality of types of subject metadata based on the ranking.

23. The method of claim 22 , wherein a highest ranking is assigned to a type of subject metadata of the plurality of types of subject metadata with a highest variance.

24. The method of claim 23 , wherein a highest weighting is assigned to a type of subject metadata of the plurality of types of subject metadata with the highest ranking.

25. The method of claim 22 , further comprising:
identifying the plurality of objects using a subject identification method with a highest weighting.

26. The method of claim 22 , further comprising:
transmitting the generated weightings to the plurality of nearby IoT devices and/or a server in communication with the plurality of nearby IoT devices.

27. The method of claim 26 , further comprising:
receiving weightings of the plurality of subject identification methods from the plurality of nearby IoT devices and/o

Assignees

• Qualcomm Inc

Inventors

• Sharma Sandeep
• Goel Amit
• Shuman Mohammed Ataur Rahman
• Sarkar Nivedita

Classifications

• H04W4/185 Primary

  by embedding added-value information into content, e.g. geo-tagging · CPC title

• G06F18/21

  Design or setup of recognition systems or techniques; Extraction of features in feature space; Blind source separation · CPC title

• G06F18/24

  Classification techniques · CPC title

• G06F18/285

  Selection of pattern recognition techniques, e.g. of classifiers in a multi-classifier system · CPC title

• H04W4/70

  Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC] · CPC title