Abstract: A user can capture an image of an object, using a computing device, to obtain information about that object. If a specular highlight (or other saturated region) is detected, the device can attempt to determine a location of a light source associated with the highlight. The device can then provide instructions as to a direction to move in order to reduce the presence of the specular highlight in subsequent images. Multiple images of the object can be captured and analyzed to generate a three-dimensional reconstruction of the environment, whereby a position of the light source can be determined. In other embodiments, movement of the specular reflections in response to movement of the device is used to determine a direction of the light source. In other embodiments, an image of the user is captured to determine the position of the light source based on shadows or reflections on the user.

Abstract: Devices and techniques are described for generating three-dimensional (3D) models of objects. Depth data acquired from a depth camera system is used with data about surface normals to generate a 3D model of the object. The depth camera system may use cameras or projectors with different baseline distances to generate depth data. The use of different baseline distances may improve accuracy of the depth data. The data about surface normals may be calculated from images acquired when the object is illuminated from different angles. By using the depth data and relative depth changes from the surface normal data, high resolution spatial data may be generated at high frame rates. Data from multiple baseline distances may also be combined to improve performance.

Abstract: Various embodiments enable a computing device to capture multiple images (or video) of text and provide at least a portion of the same to a recognizer to separately recognize text from each image. Each of the recognized outputs will typically include one or more text strings for each image. Substrings common to each of the one or more text strings are computed and compared to each text string within each image to determine an alignment consensus for each substring within the text. A template string is generated that includes each common substring in a position corresponding to a determined alignment for a respective substring. A character frequency vote is then applied to unresolved portions and the final text string is determined by filling the unresolved spaces with the character having the highest occurrence rate for a respective space.

Abstract: An airplane having a fuselage (11), opposed main wings (12), and blunt-leading-edge raked wingtips (8) is provided. Each main wing includes an outboard end (9) and a leading edge (14) having an outboard end leading-edge nose and nose radius. One blunt raked wingtip (8) is located at each main wing outboard end (9) and includes a leading edge (20) swept back from the main wing leading edge (14). Each blunt raked wingtip (8) further includes a plurality of local airfoils each having a leading-edge nose radius and a chord. The nose radius is greater than about 2% of the local chord for the majority of the airfoils. The relative bluntness of the raked wingtips minimizes boundary-layer separation, drag associated with boundary-layer separation, and premature buffeting of the aircraft during low speed flight.