Patents by Inventor Akio Ohba

Akio Ohba has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9516310
    Abstract: Frames of a moving image are configured as a hierarchical structure where each frame is represented with a plurality of resolutions. Some layers are set as original image layers, and the other layers are set as difference image layers in hierarchical data representing a frame at each time step. In the case that an area is to be displayed in the resolution of the difference image layer, to respective pixel values of a difference image of the area, respective pixel values of an image of a corresponding area retained by the original image layer of lower resolution, the image enlarged to the resolution of the difference image layer, are added. A layer to be set as a difference image layer is switched to another layer as time passes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 2, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 6, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Tetsugo Inada, Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa
  • Publication number: 20160349839
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides a display apparatus of front-of-the-eye mounted type having a camera configured to image portions around the mouth of a user. The display apparatus of front-of-the-eye mounted type includes an around-the-mouth imaging camera arranged at a position where it is practicable to image a mouth movement of a user; and a display control unit configured to display an image based on input information of the user estimated from the mouth movement imaged by the around-the-mouth imaging camera.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 16, 2016
    Publication date: December 1, 2016
    Applicant: Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
    Inventor: Akio Ohba
  • Patent number: 9460337
    Abstract: An image storage section 48 stores shot image data with a plurality of resolutions transmitted from an imaging device. Depth images 152 with a plurality of resolutions are generated using stereo images with a plurality of resolution levels from the shot image data (S10). Next, template matching is performed using a reference template image 154 that represents a desired shape and size, thus extracting a candidate area for a target picture having the shape and size for each distance range associated with one of the resolutions (S12). A more detailed analysis is performed on the extracted candidate areas using the shot image stored in the image storage section 48 (S14). In some cases, a further image analysis is performed based on the analysis result using a shot image with a higher resolution level (S16a and S16b).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 22, 2013
    Date of Patent: October 4, 2016
    Assignees: SONY CORPORATION, SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT INC.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada, Hirofumi Okamoto
  • Patent number: 9460486
    Abstract: Links are set among three hierarchical data and one moving image data. When a display area overlaps with a first link area while an image is being displayed by using first hierarchical data, switching to display by use of the 0-th hierarchical level of the second hierarchical data is made. When the display area overlaps with a second link area while an image is being displayed by using the second hierarchical data, switching to display by use of the 0-th hierarchical level of the third hierarchical data is made. The link destination of another link area is the moving image data and moving image reproduction is started as a result of zoom-up of this area. The hierarchical data are held on the client terminal side and the data existing on the other side of a switching boundary are transmitted to the client terminal in a data stream format.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: October 4, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada
  • Patent number: 9418044
    Abstract: An entertainment device includes a general-purpose signal processor made up of an assembly of component-processors, each of which can operate in parallel under operating environments independent of others component-processors. A management processor controls a cross bar so as to change the operating environments of the respective component-processors in accordance with a demand for signal processing which is given from a CPU, and to change over any one of the component-processors which receives a signal to be processed which is inputted through the cross bar or outputs a processed signal in accordance with the demand for signal processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 11, 2003
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2016
    Assignees: SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT INC., KABUSHIKI KAISHA TOSHIBA
    Inventors: Masaaki Oka, Akio Ohba, Junichi Asano, Junichi Naoi, Atsushi Kunimatsu, Jiro Amemiya
  • Patent number: 9373308
    Abstract: An input information obtaining portion of a control section obtains requests input from an input device by a user, which requests include a display region moving request to enlarge/reduce or scroll an image displayed on a display device and a request to generate/erase a viewport, change the size of a viewport, or move a viewport. A viewport control portion successively determines the number, arrangement, and size of viewports accordingly. A display region determining portion determines the region of an image to be displayed next in each viewport. A loading portion determines tile images to be newly loaded, and loads the data of the tile images from a hard disk drive. A decoding portion decodes the data of tile images used for rendering the image in each viewport. A display image processing portion updates the display region independently for each viewport.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 24, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Tetsugo Inada, Hiroyuki Segawa
  • Patent number: 9357203
    Abstract: An input information acquisition unit of an information processing device acknowledges a user input. An imaging condition control unit initiates imaging using the imaging condition determined according to the user input or a result of analyzing a captured image. An imaging condition storage unit stores an imaging condition table that maps target functions to imaging conditions. First and second image analysis units and acquire images captured by first and second cameras and installed in the imaging device and perform necessary image analysis. An information integration unit integrates images captured by the pair of cameras and results of analysis. An image data generation unit generates data for an image output as a result of the process.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2012
    Date of Patent: May 31, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada
  • Publication number: 20160080645
    Abstract: An image pickup apparatus includes: an image data production unit configured to produce data of a plurality of kinds of images from an image frame obtained by picking up an image of an object as a moving picture for each of pixel strings which configure a row; and an image sending unit configured to extract a pixel string in a region requested from a host terminal from within the data of each of the plurality of kinds of images and connect the pixel strings to each other for each unit number of pixels for connection determined on the basis of a given rule to produce a stream and then transmit the stream to the host terminal. The image sending unit switchably determines whether the unit number of pixels for connection is to be set to a fixed value or a variable value in response to the kind of each image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 20, 2015
    Publication date: March 17, 2016
    Inventors: Akio OHBA, Hiroyuki SEGAWA, Hidehiko OGASAWARA
  • Publication number: 20160071235
    Abstract: Methods and Apparatus provide for obtaining a data sequence representative of a three-dimensional parameter space; forming a plurality of coding units by dividing, in three dimensions, the data sequence subject; and generating, for each of the plurality of coding units: (i) a palette defined by two representative values, and (ii) a plurality of indices, each index representing a respective original data point as a value, determined by linear interpolation, to be one of, or an intermediate value between, the representative values, and setting the palette and the plurality of indices for each of the coding units as compressed data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 13, 2015
    Publication date: March 10, 2016
    Inventors: Tetsugo INADA, Akio OHBA, Hiroyuki SEGAWA
  • Publication number: 20160071330
    Abstract: In an image processing apparatus, an image pickup unit takes images of an object including the face of a person wearing the glasses by which to observe a stereoscopic image that contains a first parallax image and a second parallax image obtained when the object in a three-dimensional (3D) space is viewed from different viewpoints. A glasses identifying unit identifies the glasses included in the image of the object taken by the image pickup unit. A face detector detects a facial region the face of the person included in the image of the object taken by the image pickup unit, based on the glasses identified by the glasses identifying unit. An augmented-reality special rendering unit adds a virtual feature to the facial region of the face of the person detected by the face detector.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 18, 2015
    Publication date: March 10, 2016
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada
  • Publication number: 20160042242
    Abstract: An information processor includes: a similarity data generation portion generating, for a position within the search range, similarity data that represents the calculated similarity to the image in the reference block in association with the position within the search range; a similarity correction portion smoothing the similarity data in a direction of space on a basis of similarity data; a result evaluation portion detecting a position with a maximum similarity value in each piece of the smoothed similarity data; a depth image generation portion generating a depth image by associating the position of the subject in the depth direction with an image plane; and an output information generation section performing given information processing on a basis of the subject position in a three-dimensional space using the depth image and outputting the result of information processing.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 17, 2015
    Publication date: February 11, 2016
    Inventors: Hiroyuki SEGAWA, Akio OHBA, Tetsugo INADA, Hirofumi OKAMOTO, Atsushi KIMURA, Takashi KOHASHI, Takashi ITOU
  • Publication number: 20160044297
    Abstract: An information processor includes: a similarity data generation portion generating similarity data that represents the calculated similarity to the image in the reference block in association with a position within the search range; a result evaluation portion detecting a position with a maximum similarity value for each piece of the similarity data and screening the detection result by making a given evaluation of the similarity; a depth image generation portion finding a parallax for each of the reference blocks using the detection result validated as a result of screening, calculating a position of a subject in a depth direction on a basis of the parallax, and generating a depth image by associating the position of the subject in the depth direction with an image plane; and an output information generation section performing given information processing on a basis of the subject position in a three-dimensional space using the depth image and outputting the result of information processing.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 17, 2015
    Publication date: February 11, 2016
    Inventors: Hiroyuki SEGAWA, Akio OHBA, Tetsugo INADA, Hirofumi OKAMOTO, Atsushi KIMURA, Takashi KOHASHI, Takashi ITOU
  • Publication number: 20160034040
    Abstract: An information processing device that detects the position of a subject shot by a camera in a three-dimensional space is provided. The information processing device includes a depth image acquiring section that acquires a depth image in which the distance of a subject in the depth direction from the camera is represented as a pixel value on an image plane, a spatial structure identifying section that identifies the position of a plane forming a predetermined angle with a gravity vector among subject surfaces by detecting a coordinate point collection representing the plane on the basis of the distribution of coordinate points obtained by inverse projection of pixels of the depth image to the three-dimensional space based on the direction of the gravity vector, and a target object extracting section that generates and outputs position information of a predetermined target object on the basis of the position of the plane.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 6, 2015
    Publication date: February 4, 2016
    Inventors: Shinya WADA, Hiroyuki SEGAWA, Akio OHBA
  • Patent number: 9253480
    Abstract: A viewpoint detection unit detects a user viewing a stereoscopic image, including a parallax image of a subject as viewed from a predetermined position defined as a reference view position, and tracks a viewpoint of the detected user. A motion parallax correction unit determines, if a speed of movement of the viewpoint becomes equal to or higher than a predetermined level, an amount of motion parallax correction for the parallax image, on the basis of an amount of movement of the viewpoint, so as to generate a stereoscopic image corrected for motion parallax, generates, if the speed of movement of the viewpoint subsequently becomes lower than a predetermined level, a stereoscopic image by changing the amount of motion parallax correction in steps until the parallax image return to parallax images as seen from the reference view position.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 6, 2013
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Nobuo Sasaki, Akihiko Sugawara, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada
  • Patent number: 9247132
    Abstract: An image synthesis unit receives respective pixel values for a single horizontal row of a ΒΌ demosaiced image, a 1/16 demosaiced image, and a 1/64 demosaiced image from a pyramid filter for reducing, in a plurality of stages, a frame of a moving image that is captured. The image synthesis unit then connects the pixel values in a predetermined rule so as to generate a virtual synthesized image and outputs the synthesized image in the form of streams. A control unit of an image transmission unit notifies a data selection unit of a request from a host terminal. The data selection unit selects and extracts necessary data from respective streams of pieces of data of the synthesized image, a RAW image, and a 1/1 demosaiced image, and generates a stream of data to be transmitted. A packetizing unit packetizes the stream and transmits the packetized stream to the host terminal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 5, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 26, 2016
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa
  • Patent number: 9225973
    Abstract: In an image processing apparatus, an image pickup unit takes images of an object including the face of a person wearing the glasses by which to observe a stereoscopic image that contains a first parallax image and a second parallax image obtained when the object in a three-dimensional (3D) space is viewed from different viewpoints. A glasses identifying unit identifies the glasses included in the image of the object taken by the image pickup unit. A face detector detects a facial region the face of the person included in the image of the object taken by the image pickup unit, based on the glasses identified by the glasses identifying unit. An augmented-reality special rendering unit adds a virtual feature to the facial region of the face of the person detected by the face detector.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 29, 2015
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada
  • Patent number: 9218640
    Abstract: Data of a moving image has a hierarchical structure comprising a 0-th layer, a first layer, a second layer, and a third layer in a z axis direction. Each layer is composed of moving image data of a single moving image expressed in different resolutions. Both the coordinates of a viewpoint at the time of the display of a moving image and a corresponding display area are determined in a virtual three-dimensional space formed by an x axis representing the horizontal direction of the image, a y axis representing the vertical direction of the image, and a z axis representing the resolution. By providing a switching boundary for layers with respect to the z axis, the layers of the moving image data used for frame rendering are switched in accordance with the value of z of the frame coordinates.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2013
    Date of Patent: December 22, 2015
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Tetsugo Inada, Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa
  • Publication number: 20150339805
    Abstract: An imaging device includes a first camera and a second camera and shoots the same object under different shooting conditions. A shot-image data acquirer of an image analyzer acquires data of two images simultaneously shot from the imaging device. A correcting section aligns the distributions of the luminance value between the two images by carrying out correction for either one of the two images. A correction table managing section switches and generates a correction table to be used according to the function implemented by the information processing device. A correction table storage stores the correction table showing the correspondence relationship between the luminance values before and after correction. A depth image generator performs stereo matching by using the two images and generates a depth image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 22, 2013
    Publication date: November 26, 2015
    Applicant: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.,
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Tetsugo Inada, Hidehiko Ogasawara, Hirofumi Okamoto
  • Patent number: 9185269
    Abstract: A shift time monitoring section of a host terminal monitors a shift between the input timing of frame data from an imaging device and the ideal input timing for the frame data, the ideal input timing being obtained from the output frequency of a display. An operation cycle adjusting section transmits a request signal for adjusting the operation cycle per frame in the imaging device according to the magnitude of the shift in the input timing. An H-counter section of the imaging device counts the outputting of the horizontal synchronizing signal with a vertical synchronizing signal in the imaging device as a starting point, and generates a signal at a predetermined scanning line. A VSync adjusting counter section counts a pixel clock with the signal from the H-counter section as a starting point, and generates a vertical synchronization signal at a value set to the pixel clock.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 31, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 10, 2015
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio Ohba, Hiroyuki Segawa, Hideyuki Saito
  • Publication number: 20150302239
    Abstract: An image storage section 48 stores shot image data with a plurality of resolutions transmitted from an imaging device. Depth images 152 with a plurality of resolutions are generated using stereo images with a plurality of resolution levels from the shot image data (S10). Next, template matching is performed using a reference template image 154 that represents a desired shape and size, thus extracting a candidate area for a target picture having the shape and size for each distance range associated with one of the resolutions (S12). A more detailed analysis is performed on the extracted candidate areas using the shot image stored in the image storage section 48 (S14). In some cases, a further image analysis is performed based on the analysis result using a shot image with a higher resolution level (S16a and S16b).
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 22, 2013
    Publication date: October 22, 2015
    Applicant: Sony Computer Entrtainment Inc.
    Inventors: Akio OHBA, Hiroyuki SEGAWA, Tetsugo INADA, Hirofumi OKAMOTO