Intuitive computing methods and systems

摘要

A smart phone senses audio, imagery, and/or other stimulus from a user's environment, and acts autonomously to fulfill inferred or anticipated user desires. In one aspect, the detailed technology concerns phone-based cognition of a scene viewed by the phone's camera. The image processing tasks applied to the scene can be selected from among various alternatives by reference to resource costs, resource constraints, other stimulus information (e.g., audio), task substitutability, etc. The phone can apply more or less resources to an image processing task depending on how successfully the task is proceeding, or based on the user's apparent interest in the task. In some arrangements, data may be referred to the cloud for analysis, or for gleaning. Cognition, and identification of appropriate device response(s), can be aided by collateral information, such as context. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

主权项

1. In an augmented reality method practiced using a user's portable phone system, a method of preventing a display of the portable phone system from being overrun by augmentations vying for the user's attention, the method comprising the acts:
capturing imagery depicting a scene from the user's physical environment, with a camera apparatus of the portable phone system; using a processor of the portable phone system, performing plural different recognition processes in parallel, or in cyclical serial fashion, on the captured imagery, including at least two of the following processes: barcode reading, facial recognition, digital watermark decoding, text recognition, and fingerprint-based object recognition; identifying supplemental data that relate to plural features recognized in said depicted scene, including first supplemental data that relates to a feature of the depicted scene recognized by a first of said plural different recognition processes; combining the captured imagery with indicia corresponding to said identified supplemental data; and presenting the combined imagery to the user on the display of said portable phone system; wherein the method further includes said processor narrowing a universe of possible indicia for display down to a smaller number of indicia, said narrowing being a function of first and second different criteria, where: the first criterion comprises a score based on information relating to third party interactions, indicating indicia with which the third party chose to interact, said score additionally being based on one or more of: time of day, topical preference data for the user, and actions previously taken by the user expressing interest or disinterest in certain of the indicia; and the second criterion comprises a limit of N indicia that may be presented on the display, said limit being established by the user using a verbosity control; said narrowing further comprising ranking indicia in said universe of possible indicia by said score, and then presenting the highest-scoring N indicia on the display; wherein the method enables the user to control how much information is presented on the display—preventing the screen from becoming overrun with augmentations vying for the user's attention, while prioritizing augmentations that are likely of highest value to the user.