Patents Assigned to Applied Science & Technology
  • Patent number: 11321953
    Abstract: Computer implemented methods and computerized apparatus for posture, dimension and shape measurements of at least one 3D object in a scanned 3D scene are provided. The method comprises receiving a point cloud and performs 3D geometric feature extraction. In one embodiment, the 3D geometric feature extraction is based on a 3D hybrid voxel-point structure, which comprises a hybrid voxel-point based normal estimation, a hybrid voxel-point based plane segmentation, a voxel-based geometric filtering, a voxel-based edge detection and a hybrid voxel-point based line extraction. Through the process of 3D geometric feature extraction, the geometric features are then passed to the geometric-based dimension and shape measurements for various applications. After 3D geometric feature extraction, a further process of feature-based object alignment is performed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 25, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2022
    Assignee: HONG KONG APPLIED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE COMPANY LIMITED
    Inventors: Hoi Fai Yu, Xueyan Tang, Meng Chen
  • Patent number: 11323963
    Abstract: A long-range wireless network extends the battery life of the most remote end devices by forming pairs with a relayer end device that relays data from the remote end device to a gateway. The battery life of the relayer is reduced to extend the battery life of the remote end device. An analysis server selects pairs of end devices that have a difference in battery levels above a threshold, and require less transmission energy from the remote end device to the relayer than to the gateway. Energy or path losses are estimated based on geographic locations of end devices and terrain or obstacles. Redundant pairs from a remote end device are eliminated by selecting the relayer requiring the lowest transmission energy. A new configuration is sent to the remote end device. New configurations with higher Spreading Factors (SF) compensate for pairs with larger path losses to the relayer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 9, 2021
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Tak Wing Lam, Chik Ki Yeung, Tak Fuk Wong
  • Patent number: 11323986
    Abstract: Described is a method of decoding a physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH). The method comprises: for a PSCCH candidate in a resource grid, processing a received demodulation reference signal (DMRS) in a subframe of the resource grid associated with the PSCCH candidate to determine one or more potential PSCCHs for decoding, each of the one or more potential PSCCHs being identified by resource block (RB) position in the resource grid and a corresponding DMRS cyclic shift (ncs) value. This step is repeated for at least one other DMRS in the subframe to determine one or more potential PSCCHs for the at least one other DMRS. Then, a subset L of PSCCHs is selected from the potential PSCCHs. The selected subset L of PSCCHs together with their corresponding DMRS cyclic shift (ncs) values are made available for use in a decoding process for the received channel signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 11, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institue Company Limited
    Inventors: Eddy Chiu, Yun Hou, Yuyi Mao, Xiangyu Liu, Ching Hong Chris Leung, Man Wai Victor Kwan, Kong Chau Eric Tsang
  • Patent number: 11303264
    Abstract: An active filter reduces Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) created by current flowing through a power line. The active filter connects to the power line at a single node through a connection capacitor. A sense current flows through the connection capacitor when the power line current changes. This sense current is applied to a non-inverting input of an op amp to drive a power amplifier circuit through a filter capacitor. The power amplifier circuit increases the current drive of the op amp to charge a transfer capacitor that converts the power amplifier output current to a transfer voltage. The transfer capacitor is connected to the connection capacitor so that the transfer voltage is injected back into the power line through the connection capacitor as an injected voltage that compensates for the sensed current. Op amp gain is adjustable by variable resistors that connect to the inverting input of the op amp.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 6, 2020
    Date of Patent: April 12, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Danting Xu, Ziyang Gao, Kun Wu
  • Patent number: 11302689
    Abstract: An Electro-Static-Discharge (ESD) protection circuit has a Silicon-Controlled Rectifier (SCR) with a discharge current path in a first direction. A triggering transistor has a trigger current flowing in a second direction that is perpendicular to the first direction. Triggering transistors can be Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET) transistors with current flowing along the long direction of the fins. The trigger current flows into a connecting N+ drain and into an N-Well under a center portion of the connecting N+ drain to inject carriers into the N-base of a PNPN SCR. The injected current flows through the base to generate a voltage gradient that turns on the PN junction in a P+ emitter that is parallel to but spaced apart from the FinFET transistors, causing a discharge current to flow perpendicular to the fins. The perpendicular discharge current flows through the substrate which can handle a larger current than the small fins.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 13, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 12, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventor: Chun-Kit Yam
  • Patent number: 11287626
    Abstract: The invention provides a chromatic confocal system for inspecting an object. The system comprises a first light modulator for providing a spatially modulated light beam arranged to project on one or more parts of the object to form a reflected light beam carrying image information of the one or more projected parts of the object; a second light modulator for spatially filtering the reflected light beam to form a light beam carrying filtered image information of the one or more projected parts of the object; wherein operation of the first light modulator and the second light modulator is synchronized such that the spatial filtering of the second light modulator varies in concert with variations in the spatial modulation of the first light modulator.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Comoanv Limited
    Inventors: Vladislav Nikitin, Changli Wu, Qi Lang
  • Patent number: 11284405
    Abstract: Described is a method of reducing uplink inter-cell interference in a cellular communications network. The method comprises identifying in a cell any user equipments (UEs) which are susceptible to interference (ISUs) from another UE, particularly another UE in a neighboring cell. The method includes identifying in said cell any UEs causing interference (ICUs) to at least one neighboring cell and, more particularly, causing interference to a UE in a neighboring cell. The identified ISUs and ICUs are combined into a priority list for frequency resource reservation or allocation in said cell. The method may include limiting the identification of ISUs and ICUs to a selected number of UEs within the cell.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Zizhou Wang, Qifeng Liao, Jihui Zhang, Man Wai Kwan, Kong Chau Tsang
  • Patent number: 11283214
    Abstract: Described is a power connector device for separating an electrical connection under direct current (DC) voltage or alternating current (AC) voltage between an electrical connector element and an electrical contact element. The power connector device includes the electrical contact element. The electrical contact element has a first conductive part and a second conductive part spaced apart one from the other so as not to be directly electrically conductively connected to one another. The power connector device includes a semiconductor switch for maintaining an electrical connection between the electrical connector element and the electrical contact element during separation of contact between said electrical connector element and said first conductive part to thereby prevent arcing during electrical disengagement of the electrical connector element from the electrical contact element.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 10, 2021
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co., LTD
    Inventors: Chung Yin Lau, Kin Lap Wong, Tin Ho Li
  • Patent number: 11269203
    Abstract: Polarization-independent focusing is advantageously achieved by a multifocal system having a polarization beam splitter (PBS) to split an unpolarized light beam into two orthogonally linearly-polarized (LP) light beams. The two LP light beams are reflected by mirrors to travel in opposite directions and enter into a variable-focusing module at two ends thereof, respectively. The module includes waveplates to convert the LP light beams into two circularly-polarized (CP) light beams at both ends of an optical assembly. The optical assembly is formed with a stack of birefringent optical elements including at least one geometric phase lens and one polarization selector that may be electrically modulated to select the optical power in focusing the two CP light beams. Followed by the waveplates converting two focused CP light beams to two focused LP light beams and upon mirror reflection, the beams are finally recombined by the PBS to form one focused light beam.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 23, 2020
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Ming Wai Alwin Tam, Xiaohan Wang, Zhuanyun Zhang, Xiuling Zhu, Kin Lung Kenny Chan
  • Patent number: 11270447
    Abstract: In a convolutional neural network (CNN) using an encoder-decoder structure for image segmentation, a multi-scale context aggregation module receives an encoded final-stage feature map from the encoder, and sequentially aggregates multi-scale contexts of this feature map from a global scale to a local scale to strengthen semantic relationships of contexts of different scales to improve segmentation accuracy. The multi-scale contexts are obtained by computing atrous convolution on the feature map for different dilation rates. To reduce computation, a channel-wise feature selection (CFS) module is used in the decoder to merge two input feature maps. Each feature map is processed by a global pooling layer followed by a fully connected layer or a 1×1 convolutional layer to select channels of high activation. By subsequent channel-wise multiplication and elementwise summation, only channels with high activation in both feature maps are preserved and enhanced in the merged feature map.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 10, 2020
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Shangping Liu, Lu Wang, Pingping Zhang, Huchuan Lu
  • Patent number: 11215504
    Abstract: Systems and methods which provide a high-throughput point source light coupling structure implementing a condenser configured according to one or more condenser configuration rules are described. Embodiments of a high-throughput point source light coupling structure utilize a birefringent plate configuration in combination with a condenser and point source to provide a light coupler structure for a birefringent-static-Fourier transform interferometer implementation. According to some examples, the optical axis of a first and second birefringent plate of a birefringent plate configuration are not in the same plane. A condenser of a high-throughput point source light coupling structure of embodiments is provided in a defined (e.g., spaced, relational, etc.) relationship with respect to the point source and/or a camera lens used in capturing an interference pattern generated by the light coupling structure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 4, 2020
    Date of Patent: January 4, 2022
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Jiangquan Mai
  • Patent number: 11210551
    Abstract: Systems and methods which provide iterative multi-directional image searching are described. Embodiments utilize a multi-directional searching pattern for defining one or more searching areas within a source image. A searching area of embodiments provides a searching area within a source image for searching for a template image in the multiple directions of the multi-directional searching pattern. A location of the searching area within the source image may be updated iteratively, such as based upon motion vectors derived from the searching, until a template image match position is identified within the source image. Embodiments transform the template image and the searching area within a source image to 1D representations corresponding to each direction of the multi-directional image search. Embodiments accommodate rotation and scale variance of the subject (e.g., object of interest) of the template image within the source image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 29, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 28, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Tian Qiu
  • Patent number: 11206167
    Abstract: A method of performing carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation and/or time offset (TO) estimation at a radio equipment in a mobile communications system. The method allows, for each of a plurality of synchronization signal (SS) blocks (SSBs) in a SS Burst detected at said radio equipment, determining a CFO estimation and/or a TO estimation based on network information signal prediction. The method includes selecting at least some of said detected SSBs in said SSB Burst and combining the CFO estimations and/or the TO estimations to obtain improved CFO compensation and/or TO compensation for signal processing at said radio equipment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 8, 2020
    Date of Patent: December 21, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limted
    Inventors: Haiming Zhang, Eddy Chiu, Man-Wai Kwan, Ho Yin Chan, Chunhua Sun, Kong Chau Tsang
  • Patent number: 11197279
    Abstract: Described is a method and apparatus for processing an uplink (UL) signal at a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a wireless communication system to determine a discontinuous transmission (DTX) state. The method comprises receiving a UL channel signal at a PUCCH receiver apparatus and, after resource element (RE) demapping of said received UL channel signal in said PUCCH receiver apparatus, normalizing a signal power of at least one signal element or resource. The normalized power is compared to a selected, calculated or predetermined threshold and, based on said comparison, a determination is made on whether or not a DTX state has occurred.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 7, 2020
    Date of Patent: December 7, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Kanghao Jia, Yuxian Zhang, Man Wai Kwan, Kong Chau Tsang
  • Patent number: 11195413
    Abstract: A method for improving road safety of a vehicle in a system having a plurality of communicatively connected roadside units (RSUs) placed within a defined geographical area, each RSU configured to receive data from a plurality of sources located within its respective coverage area forming part of said defined geographical area and to at least transmit the received data and/or data derived from the received data to one or more data processing units located within its coverage area. The method has the steps of: receiving data defining an event E1 occurring within the coverage area of an event RSU; determining a type of the event E1; and based on the type of event E1, communicating data defining the event E1 or data related to the event E1 from the event RSU to one or more selected RSUs from remaining RSUs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 25, 2020
    Date of Patent: December 7, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd
    Inventors: Dongzhe Su, Hang Chen, Siu Ping Chan, Ka Ho Mui
  • Patent number: 11176447
    Abstract: A deep neural network models semiconductor devices. Measurements of test transistors are gathered into training data including gate and drain voltages and transistor width and length, and target data such as the drain current measured under the input conditions. The training data is converted by an input pre-processor that can apply logarithms of the inputs or perform a Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Rather than use measured drain current as the target when training the deep neural network, a target transformer transforms the drain current into a transformed drain current, such as a derivative of the drain current with respect to gate or drain voltages, or a logarithm of the derivative. Weights in the deep neural network are adjusted during training by comparing the deep neural network's output to the transformed drain current and generating a loss function that is minimized over the training data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 19, 2018
    Date of Patent: November 16, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Yuan Lei, Xiao Huo
  • Patent number: 11171675
    Abstract: A switch-less transceiver has parallel LC resonances that act as OFF switches and series LC resonances act as ON switches when resonating at the transmit (TX) or receive (RX) frequency. When the transmitter is disabled, no current flows through series LC filters. Instead, series impedances to ground provide an RF ground to the transmitter output node. A TX inductor between the transmitter output node and the antenna is in parallel with a TX blocking capacitor to ground, which together form a parallel resonance to ground that has a high impedance when resonating at the receiver frequency. This high impedance acts as an OFF switch to block antenna signals from entering the transmitter. The two paths are in parallel, presenting a high impedance to the antenna and forming an OFF switch when the receiver is disabled.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 17, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company, Limited
    Inventors: Huimin Guo, Yujian Han, Yat Tung Lai
  • Patent number: 11169832
    Abstract: A method of generating an AR user manual in an electronic 3D viewing environment, comprising: recording a moving trajectory of the 3D viewing environment's optical sensor; receiving a landmark location information; executing an iterative target object pose estimation comprising: estimating an estimated target object pose from each of the optical sensor poses in the recorded moving trajectory and the landmark location; calculating an estimation error from a 3D model being arranged in the estimated target object pose and projected onto the target object in the real-world scene; calculating a mean of the estimation errors; and reiterating the iterative target object pose estimation to optimize the estimated target object pose for a minimum mean estimation error; if the minimum mean estimation error is within a predefined estimation error threshold, then rendering the AR user manual onto the target object according to the optimized estimated target object pose.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Yat Cheung Ngai, Yin Yee Chan
  • Patent number: 11132514
    Abstract: A method for applying image encoding recognition in the execution of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, comprising the processing steps as follows. A sentence from a textual source is extracted by an NLP-based feature extractor. A word vector is generated in response to the sentence by the NLP-based feature extractor. The word vector is converted into a feature vector {right arrow over (b)} by the NLP-based feature extractor, in which the feature vector {right arrow over (b)} satisfies {right arrow over (b)}?m and the parameter m is a positive integer. The feature vector is transformed into an image set having a plurality of two-dimensional images by a transformer. The image set is fed to a neural network to execute image recognition by a processor, so as to analyze the sentence.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 28, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Yu Keung Ng, Yang Liu, Zhi Bin Lei
  • Patent number: 11127524
    Abstract: An assembly for power converting includes a circuit board, a power switching circuit mounted on the circuit board, an inductor coil that includes a winding and two ends, a magnetic core that is surrounded by the winding of the inductor coil, and a magnetic mixture that encapsulates the circuit board, the power switching circuit, the inductor coil and the magnetic core. The winding of the inductor coil is stacked above the power switching circuit and is sufficiently large to fill up a size of the assembly.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2018
    Date of Patent: September 21, 2021
    Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited
    Inventors: Xiaoyong Hu, Ziyang Gao, Zhou Li