Patents by Inventor Andrea Frome
Andrea Frome 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).
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Patent number: 9436886Abstract: A system and method is provided for automatically recognizing building numbers in street level images. In one aspect, a processor selects a street level image that is likely to be near an address of interest. The processor identifies those portions of the image that are visually similar to street numbers, and then extracts the numeric values of the characters displayed in such portions. If an extracted value corresponds with the building number of the address of interest such as being substantially equal to the address of interest, the extracted value and the image portion are displayed to a human operator. The human operator confirms, by looking at the image portion, whether the image portion appears to be a building number that matches the extracted value. If so, the processor stores a value that associates that building number with the street level image.Type: GrantFiled: March 17, 2015Date of Patent: September 6, 2016Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Raymond W. Smith, Kong Man Cheung, Andrea Frome, Shlomo Urbach
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Publication number: 20160188991Abstract: A system and method is provided for automatically recognizing building numbers in street level images. In one aspect, a processor selects a street level image that is likely to be near an address of interest. The processor identifies those portions of the image that are visually similar to street numbers, and then extracts the numeric values of the characters displayed in such portions. If an extracted value corresponds with the building number of the address of interest such as being substantially equal to the address of interest, the extracted value and the image portion are displayed to a human operator. The human operator confirms, by looking at the image portion, whether the image portion appears to be a building number that matches the extracted value. If so, the processor stores a value that associates that building number with the street level image.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 17, 2015Publication date: June 30, 2016Inventors: Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Raymond W. Smith, Kong Man Cheung, Andrea Frome, Shlomo Urbach
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Patent number: 9195987Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for determining whether given business listings are spam or are closed businesses. In one example, a system receives a business listing from a user. The business listing contains a geolocation and the name of a business. The system also receives one or more street level images related to a geographic object that is at or near the same geolocation as the business listing. The system determines if the business listing is spam or is closed based on the received street level images by determining if the geographic object is the business or by analyzing whether the business associated with the listing is shown in any of the street level images.Type: GrantFiled: February 24, 2011Date of Patent: November 24, 2015Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Andrea Frome, Howard Wellington Trickey, Melanie Clements, Ethan G. Russell, Paul Eastlund, Diego Ariel Gertzenstein, Douglas Richard Grundman, Baris Yuksel
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Patent number: 9057618Abstract: Systems and methods provide approximations of latitude and longitude coordinates of objects, for example a business, in street level images. The images may be collected by a camera. An image of a business is collected along with GPS coordinates and direction of the camera. Depth maps of the images may be generated, for example, based on laser depth detection or displacement of the business between two images caused by a change in the position of the camera. After identifying a business in one or more images, the distance from the camera to a point or area relative to the business in the one or more images may be determined based on the depth maps. Using this distance and the direction of the camera which collected the one or more images and GPS coordinates of the camera, the approximate GPS coordinates of the business may be determined.Type: GrantFiled: September 24, 2013Date of Patent: June 16, 2015Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Abhijit S. Ogale, Stephane Lafon, Andrea Frome
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Patent number: 9053115Abstract: Methods, systems and apparatus for identifying result images for a query image. One or more labels that are associated with the query image are obtained. Candidate images matching the query labels are identified. Visual similarity scores are generated for the candidate images. Each visual similarity score represents the visual similarity of a respective candidate image to the query image. Relevance scores are generated for each of the candidate images based on the visual similarity scores. Each relevance score represents a measure of relevance of the respective candidate images to the query image. The candidate images are ranked based on the relevance scores, a highest ranking subset of the candidate images being identified as result images and referenced by image search results. The result images can be candidate images that satisfy a similarity condition relative to the query image and other result images.Type: GrantFiled: August 23, 2012Date of Patent: June 9, 2015Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Charles J. Rosenberg, Jingbin Wang, Sarah Moussa, Erik Murphy-Chutorian, Andrea Frome, Yoram Singer, Radhika Malpani
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Publication number: 20150154607Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for determining whether given business listings are spam or are closed businesses. In one example, a system receives a business listing from a user. The business listing contains a geolocation and the name of a business. The system also receives one or more street level images related to a geographic object that is at or near the same geolocation as the business listing. The system determines if the business listing is spam or is closed based on the received street level images by determining if the geographic object is the business or by analyzing whether the business associated with the listing is shown in any of the street level images.Type: ApplicationFiled: February 24, 2011Publication date: June 4, 2015Applicant: Google, Inc.Inventors: Andrea Frome, Howard Wellington Trickey, Melanie Clements, Ethan G. Russell, Paul Eastlund, Diego Ariel Gertzenstein, Douglas Richard Grundman, Baris Yuksel
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Publication number: 20150153188Abstract: Systems and methods provide approximations of latitude and longitude coordinates of objects, for example a business, in street level images. The images may be collected by a camera. An image of a business is collected along with GPS coordinates and direction of the camera. Depth maps of the images may be generated, for example, based on laser depth detection or displacement of the business between two images caused by a change in the position of the camera. After identifying a business in one or more images, the distance from the camera to a point or area relative to the business in the one or more images may be determined based on the depth maps. Using this distance and the direction of the camera which collected the one or more images and GPS coordinates of the camera, the approximate GPS coordinates of the business may be determined.Type: ApplicationFiled: September 24, 2013Publication date: June 4, 2015Applicant: GOOGLE INC.Inventors: Abhijit S. Ogale, Stephane Lafon, Andrea Frome
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Patent number: 9020265Abstract: A system and method is provided for automatically recognizing building numbers in street level images. In one aspect, a processor selects a street level image that is likely to be near an address of interest. The processor identifies those portions of the image that are visually similar to street numbers, and then extracts the numeric values of the characters displayed in such portions. If an extracted value corresponds with the building number of the address of interest such as being substantially equal to the address of interest, the extracted value and the image portion are displayed to a human operator. The human operator confirms, by looking at the image portion, whether the image portion appears to be a building number that matches the extracted value. If so, the processor stores a value that associates that building number with the street level image.Type: GrantFiled: June 5, 2014Date of Patent: April 28, 2015Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Raymond W. Smith, Kong Man Cheung, Andrea Frome, Shlomo Urbach
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Patent number: 8942415Abstract: A system and method is provided wherein, in one aspect, a processor determines whether multiple street level images have captured a nearly-identical face. If so, the images are processed to determine whether the face appears to be part of an advertisement. Once it is determined that the face is displayed on an advertisement, the boundaries of the advertisement may be determined and the location of the advertisement is stored for future use, e.g., potentially replacing the advertisement in the image with a different advertisement.Type: GrantFiled: October 24, 2013Date of Patent: January 27, 2015Assignee: Google Inc.Inventor: Andrea Frome
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Publication number: 20140286573Abstract: A system and method is provided for automatically recognizing building numbers in street level images. In one aspect, a processor selects a street level image that is likely to be near an address of interest. The processor identifies those portions of the image that are visually similar to street numbers, and then extracts the numeric values of the characters displayed in such portions. If an extracted value corresponds with the building number of the address of interest such as being substantially equal to the address of interest, the extracted value and the image portion are displayed to a human operator. The human operator confirms, by looking at the image portion, whether the image portion appears to be a building number that matches the extracted value. If so, the processor stores a value that associates that building number with the street level image.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 5, 2014Publication date: September 25, 2014Applicant: GOOGLE INC.Inventors: Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Raymond W. Smith, Kong Man Cheung, Andrea Frome, Shlomo Urbach
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Patent number: 8811656Abstract: Establishments are identified in geo-tagged images. According to one aspect, text regions are located in a geo-tagged image and text strings in the text regions are recognized using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. Text phrases are extracted from information associated with establishments known to be near the geographic location specified in the geo-tag of the image. The text strings recognized in the image are compared with the phrases for the establishments for approximate matches, and an establishment is selected as the establishment in the image based on the approximate matches. According to another aspect, text strings recognized in a collection of geo-tagged images are compared with phrases for establishments in the geographic area identified by the geo-tags to generate scores for image-establishment pairs. Establishments in each of the large collection of images as well as representative images showing each establishment are identified using the scores.Type: GrantFiled: September 6, 2013Date of Patent: August 19, 2014Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Shlomo Urbach, Tal Yadid, Yuval Netzer, Andrea Frome, Noam Ben-Haim
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Patent number: 8787673Abstract: A system and method is provided for automatically recognizing building numbers in street level images. In one aspect, a processor selects a street level image that is likely to be near an address of interest. The processor identifies those portions of the image that are visually similar to street numbers, and then extracts the numeric values of the characters displayed in such portions. If an extracted value corresponds with the building number of the address of interest such as being substantially equal to the address of interest, the extracted value and the image portion are displayed to a human operator. The human operator confirms, by looking at the image portion, whether the image portion appears to be a building number that matches the extracted value. If so, the processor stores a value that associates that building number with the street level image.Type: GrantFiled: July 12, 2011Date of Patent: July 22, 2014Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Raymond W. Smith, Kong man Cheung, Andrea Frome, Shlomo Urbach
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Patent number: 8761446Abstract: Embodiments of this invention relate to detecting and blurring images. In an embodiment, a system detects objects in a photographic image. The system includes an object detector module configured to detect regions of the photographic image that include objects of a particular type at least based on the content of the photographic image. The system further includes a false positive detector module configured to determine whether each region detected by the object detector module includes an object of the particular type at least based on information about the context in which the photographic image was taken.Type: GrantFiled: September 13, 2012Date of Patent: June 24, 2014Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Andrea Frome, German Cheung, Ahmad Abdulkader, Marco Zennaro, Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissallo, Hartmut Neven, Luc Vincent, Hartwig Adam
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Publication number: 20140003650Abstract: Establishments are identified in geo-tagged images. According to one aspect, text regions are located in a geo-tagged image and text strings in the text regions are recognized using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. Text phrases are extracted from information associated with establishments known to be near the geographic location specified in the geo-tag of the image. The text strings recognized in the image are compared with the phrases for the establishments for approximate matches, and an establishment is selected as the establishment in the image based on the approximate matches. According to another aspect, text strings recognized in a collection of geo-tagged images are compared with phrases for establishments in the geographic area identified by the geo-tags to generate scores for image-establishment pairs. Establishments in each of the large collection of images as well as representative images showing each establishment are identified using the scores.Type: ApplicationFiled: September 6, 2013Publication date: January 2, 2014Applicant: Google Inc.Inventors: Shlomo Urbach, Tal Yadid, Yuval Netzer, Andrea Frome, Noam Ben-Haim
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Patent number: 8600102Abstract: A system and method is provided wherein, in one aspect, a processor determines whether multiple street level images have captured a nearly-identical face. If so, the images are processed to determine whether the face appears to be part of an advertisement. Once it is determined that the face is displayed on an advertisement, the boundaries of the advertisement may be determined and the location of the advertisement is stored for future use, e.g., potentially replacing the advertisement in the image with a different advertisement.Type: GrantFiled: September 19, 2011Date of Patent: December 3, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventor: Andrea Frome
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Patent number: 8577604Abstract: Systems and methods provide approximations of latitude and longitude coordinates of objects, for example a business, in street level images. The images may be collected by a camera. An image of a business is collected along with GPS coordinates and direction of the camera. Depth maps of the images may be generated, for example, based on laser depth detection or displacement of the business between two images caused by a change in the position of the camera. After identifying a business in one or more images, the distance from the camera to a point or area relative to the business in the one or more images may be determined based on the depth maps. Using this distance and the direction of the camera which collected the one or more images and GPS coordinates of the camera, the approximate GPS coordinates of the business may be determined.Type: GrantFiled: June 10, 2011Date of Patent: November 5, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Abhijit Ogale, Stephane Lafon, Andrea Frome
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Patent number: 8532333Abstract: Establishments are identified in geo-tagged images. According to one aspect, text regions are located in a geo-tagged image and text strings in the text regions are recognized using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. Text phrases are extracted from information associated with establishments known to be near the geographic location specified in the geo-tag of the image. The text strings recognized in the image are compared with the phrases for the establishments for approximate matches, and an establishment is selected as the establishment in the image based on the approximate matches. According to another aspect, text strings recognized in a collection of geo-tagged images are compared with phrases for establishments in the geographic area identified by the geo-tags to generate scores for image-establishment pairs. Establishments in each of the large collection of images as well as representative images showing each establishment are identified using the scores.Type: GrantFiled: September 27, 2011Date of Patent: September 10, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Shlomo Urbach, Tal Yadid, Yuval Netzer, Andrea Frome, Noam Ben-Haim
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Patent number: 8509499Abstract: A method and system of identity masking to obscure identities corresponding to face regions in an image is disclosed. A face detector is applied to detect a set of possible face regions in the image. Then an identity masker is used to process the detected face regions by identity masking techniques in order to obscure identities corresponding to the regions. For example, a detected face region can be blurred as if it is in motion by a motion blur algorithm, such that the blurred region can not be recognized as the original identity. Or the detected face region can be replaced by a substitute facial image by a face replacement algorithm to obscure the corresponding identity.Type: GrantFiled: November 22, 2011Date of Patent: August 13, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Sergey Ioffe, Lance Williams, Dennis Strelow, Andrea Frome, Luc Vincent
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Patent number: 8429173Abstract: Methods, systems and apparatus for identifying result images for a query image. One or more labels that are associated with the query image are obtained. Candidate images matching the query labels are identified. Visual similarity scores are generated for the candidate images. Each visual similarity score represents the visual similarity of a respective candidate image to the query image. Relevance scores are generated for each of the candidate images based on the visual similarity scores. Each relevance score represents a measure of relevance of the respective candidate images to the query image. The candidate images are ranked based on the relevance scores, a highest ranking subset of the candidate images being identified as result images and referenced by image search results. The result images can be candidate images that satisfy a similarity condition relative to the query image and other result images.Type: GrantFiled: April 20, 2010Date of Patent: April 23, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Charles Rosenberg, Jingbin Wang, Sarah Moussa, Erik Murphy-Chutorian, Andrea Frome, Yoram Singer, Radhika Malpani
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Patent number: 8385593Abstract: Establishments are identified in geo-tagged images. According to one aspect, text regions are located in a geo-tagged image and text strings in the text regions are recognized using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. Text phrases are extracted from information associated with establishments known to be near the geographic location specified in the geo-tag of the image. The text strings recognized in the image are compared with the phrases for the establishments for approximate matches, and an establishment is selected as the establishment in the image based on the approximate matches. According to another aspect, text strings recognized in a collection of geo-tagged images are compared with phrases for establishments in the geographic area identified by the geo-tags to generate scores for image-establishment pairs. Establishments in each of the large collection of images as well as representative images showing each establishment are identified using the scores.Type: GrantFiled: May 11, 2011Date of Patent: February 26, 2013Assignee: Google Inc.Inventors: Shlomo Urbach, Tal Yadid, Yuval Netzer, Andrea Frome, Noam Ben-Haim