Patents Examined by Tamara Griffin
  • Patent number: 9852400
    Abstract: A quitting-intention estimating system facilitates detecting an entity's intention to quit an organization. During operation, the system obtains recent electronic-communication information associated with the entity under investigation, such as an employee of a corporation, or a volunteer of a non-profit organization. The system can determine the entity's quitting intention by determining a plurality of recent communication features from the electronic-communication information, for example, by using a variety of feature-extracting modules that extract the features from the entity's electronic communications. The system then computes a quitting-intention value for the entity under investigation, using a quitting-intention estimating function that takes the recent communication features as input.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 1, 2013
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: PALO ALTO RESEARCH CENTER INCORPORATED
    Inventors: Yiye Ruan, Jianqiang Shen, Oliver Brdiczka
  • Patent number: 9839856
    Abstract: There is provided a system for providing interactivity to a guest of an experiential venue, based on sensor measurement of the guest. The system comprises a sensor configured to sense a guest variable of the guest, where the sensor may be a biometric sensor, a facial recognition sensor, a voice stress analysis sensor, a gesture recognition sensor, a motion tracking sensor, or an eye tracking sensor, and may sense heart rate or another guest variable. The system also comprises a control system, which may be implemented as a computer, in communication with the sensor. The control system is configured to determine a guest state from the guest variable, and to modify a venue variable, for example by selecting a path a theme park ride follows. The control system modifies the venue variable according to the guest state to provide increased satisfaction to the guest of the experiential venue.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 11, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 12, 2017
    Assignee: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
    Inventors: David Crawford, David Durham, Jon Georges