Abstract: This description provides an autonomous or semi-autonomous excavation vehicle that is capable of navigating through a dig site and carrying an excavation routine using a system of sensors physically mounted to the excavation vehicle. The sensors collect one or more of spatial, imaging, measurement, and location data representing the status of the excavation vehicle and its surrounding environment. Based on the collected data, the excavation vehicle executes instructions to perform an excavation routine by excavating earth from a hole using an excavation tool positioned at a single location within the site. The excavation vehicle is also able to carry out numerous other tasks, such as checking the volume of excavated earth in an excavation tool, navigating the excavation vehicle over a distance while continuously excavating earth from a below surface depth, and preparing a digital terrain model of the site as part of a process for creating the excavation routine.

Abstract: The present invention is a system in which packet-switched (or general purpose network) multimedia data streaming is controlled based on the capabilities of a client and the preferences of a user. A server processor, coupled to the client processor over a packet-switched network, such as the Internet, receives client processor capabilities in association with a request for service for a multimedia type data transfer. The capabilities can be obtained by an application running on the client assessing the capabilities or through prompting of the user. The client capabilities include, for example, processor speed and multimedia encoders of the client. The server can also obtain the preferences of the user of the client processor and respond based on the preferences. Preferences include, for example, the quality of service of the transfer. The capabilities and preferences can be obtained via a query from the server to the client or can be automatically sent with each request.