Patents by Inventor Mark Zimmer
Mark Zimmer 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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Publication number: 20240331011Abstract: Systems, methods, and media are provided for product substitution functionality for harmonizing procurement across distribution networks. A substitution evaluation can be triggered and performed responsive to receiving a selection of a product for adding to a shopping cart based on an interaction between the user and a user interface. A shopping cart page can be presented on the user interface that identifies the selected product and a suggested substitute product and includes a selectable user interface element associated with the substitute product. Responsive to receiving a selection of the selectable user interface element, the selected product can be replaced in the shopping cart with the suggested substitute product, and an order for the substitute product can be placed upon completion of a checkout process.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 29, 2024Publication date: October 3, 2024Inventors: Paul J. Clarke, Brittany A. Zimmer, Mark D. Perl, Lucas W. G. Wilson, Matthew J. Ehland, Nadder D. Sahar, Andrew J. Novotny, Alexander E. Neuwirth, Piyush Saxena
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Publication number: 20240280993Abstract: A machine and process for control of rotation of a vehicle about an axis of the vehicle is shown. A flight control system includes control laws that control the rotation of the vehicle around the axis of the vehicle. An estimate is derived for an inertia about the axis. The estimated inertia is derived from sensed quantities of material in a component of the vehicle. An inertia gain schedule and filter are added to enhance, using the estimated inertia, the accuracy of the control laws that control the rotation of the vehicle around the axis of the vehicle.Type: ApplicationFiled: February 17, 2023Publication date: August 22, 2024Inventors: Mark R. Morel, Neil Zimmer, Tristan Flanzer
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Publication number: 20190370942Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for correcting red-eye artifacts in a target image of a subject. Images, captured by a camera, including a raw image, are used to generate the target image. An eye region of the target image is modulated to correct for the red-eye artifacts, wherein correction is carried out based on information extracted from at least one of the raw image and the target image. Modulation comprises detecting landmarks associated with the eye region; estimating spectral response of the red eye artifacts; segmenting an image region of the eye based on the estimated spectral response of the red eye artifacts and the detected landmarks, forming a repair mask; and modifying an image region associated with the repair mask.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 29, 2019Publication date: December 5, 2019Inventors: Alexis GATT, David HAYWARD, Emmanuel PIUZE-PHANEUF, Mark ZIMMER, Yingjun BAI, Zhigang FAN
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Patent number: 10402934Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.Type: GrantFiled: June 21, 2017Date of Patent: September 3, 2019Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
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Publication number: 20180088776Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, pyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.Type: ApplicationFiled: October 2, 2017Publication date: March 29, 2018Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
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Publication number: 20170345123Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 21, 2017Publication date: November 30, 2017Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
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Patent number: 9778815Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.Type: GrantFiled: July 13, 2016Date of Patent: October 3, 2017Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
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Patent number: 9710896Abstract: Systems and methods for reducing chrominance (chroma) noise in image data are provided. In one example of such a method, image data in YCC format may be received into logic of an image signal processor. Using the logic, noise may be filtered from a first chrominance component or a second chrominance component, or both, of the image data, using a sparse filter and a noise threshold. The noise threshold may be determined based at least in part on two of the components of the YCC image data.Type: GrantFiled: July 10, 2015Date of Patent: July 18, 2017Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: Suk Hwan Lim, Mark Zimmer
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Patent number: 9691118Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.Type: GrantFiled: February 20, 2014Date of Patent: June 27, 2017Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
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Publication number: 20170115846Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.Type: ApplicationFiled: July 13, 2016Publication date: April 27, 2017Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
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Patent number: 9619862Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing raw camera noise reduction using a novel, so-called “alignment mapping” technique to more effectively separate structure from noise in an image, in order to aid in the denoising process. Alignment mapping allows for the extraction of more structure from the image and also the ability to understand the image structure, yielding information for edge direction, edge length, and corner locations within the image. This information can be used to smooth long edges properly and to prevent tight image details, e.g., text, from being overly smoothed. In alignment maps, the amount of noise may be used to compute thresholds and scaling parameters used in the preparation of the alignment map. According to some embodiments, a feature map may also be created for the image. Finally, the image may be smoothed using the created feature map as a mask.Type: GrantFiled: May 29, 2015Date of Patent: April 11, 2017Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventor: Mark Zimmer
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Patent number: 9443290Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing color defringing on image data. In photography, particularly RAW images, different artifacts can affect the quality of the edges of objects in the image. This effect is generally more noticeable when the edge has high contrast. One motivation for the described techniques is the understanding that, typically, not all pixels of an image exhibit color fringing. Usually, fringing only occurs in high-contrast edges. Mere masking of the effects of the whole-image operations can improve the result, but further improvements are still possible. This disclosure also pertains to novel devices and computer readable media for performing red-blue color reconstruction on data from a variety of color filter arrays (CFAs).Type: GrantFiled: June 26, 2013Date of Patent: September 13, 2016Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventor: Mark Zimmer
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Patent number: 9443292Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing “blind” color defringing on images. In one embodiment, the blind defringing process begins with blind color edge alignment. This process largely cancels every kind of fringe, except for axial chromatic aberration. Next, the process looks at the edges and computes natural high and low colors to either side of the edge, attempting to get new pixel colors that aren't contaminated by the fringe color. Next, the process resolves the pixel's estimated new color by interpolating between the low and high colors, based on the green variation across the edge and the amount of green in the pixel that is being repaired. Care is taken to prevent artifacts in areas that generally do not fringe, like red-black boundaries and skin tone. Finally, the process computes the final repaired color by using luminance-scaling of the new pixel color estimate.Type: GrantFiled: May 29, 2015Date of Patent: September 13, 2016Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventor: Mark Zimmer
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Patent number: 9417763Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein use a compass, MEMS accelerometer, GPS module, and MEMS gyrometer to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. This can provide a true Frenet frame, i.e., X- and Y-vectors for the display, and also a Z-vector that points perpendicularly to the display. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track the Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide a continuous 3D frame-of-reference. Once this continuous frame of reference is known, the position of a user's eyes may either be inferred or calculated directly by using a device's front-facing camera. With the position of the user's eyes and a continuous 3D frame-of-reference for the display, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the objects on the device's display may be created and interacted with by the user.Type: GrantFiled: December 15, 2014Date of Patent: August 16, 2016Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
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Patent number: 9411413Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.Type: GrantFiled: July 11, 2014Date of Patent: August 9, 2016Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
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Publication number: 20160189686Abstract: Disclosed are a system and method for computing a picture. Instead of loading a file that contains the image from memory, the present invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural recipe and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a picture. The picture can be computed very quickly using a GPU (graphics processing unit), and can be made to move on demand. When a part of the image is needed to composite, that part is computed using a fragment program on the GPU using the procedural recipe and a specially written fragment program into a temporary VRAM buffer. After it is computed and composited, the buffer containing the result of the fragment program may be discarded.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 8, 2016Publication date: June 30, 2016Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Ralph Brunner, Imran Chaudhri
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Patent number: 9292944Abstract: Disclosed are a system and method for computing a picture. Instead of loading a file that contains the image from memory, the present invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural recipe and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a picture. The picture can be computed very quickly using a GPU (graphics processing unit), and can be made to move on demand. When a part of the image is needed to composite, that part is computed using a fragment program on the GPU using the procedural recipe and a specially written fragment program into a temporary VRAM buffer. After it is computed and composited, the buffer containing the result of the fragment program may be discarded.Type: GrantFiled: June 16, 2014Date of Patent: March 22, 2016Assignee: Apple Inc.Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Ralph Brunner, Imran Chaudhri
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Publication number: 20150348244Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing “blind” color defringing on images. In one embodiment, the blind defringing process begins with blind color edge alignment. This process largely cancels every kind of fringe, except for axial chromatic aberration. Next, the process looks at the edges and computes natural high and low colors to either side of the edge, attempting to get new pixel colors that aren't contaminated by the fringe color. Next, the process resolves the pixel's estimated new color by interpolating between the low and high colors, based on the green variation across the edge and the amount of green in the pixel that is being repaired. Care is taken to prevent artifacts in areas that generally do not fringe, like red-black boundaries and skin tone. Finally, the process computes the final repaired color by using luminance-scaling of the new pixel color estimate.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 29, 2015Publication date: December 3, 2015Inventor: Mark Zimmer
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Publication number: 20150350576Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing raw camera noise reduction using a novel, so-called “alignment mapping” technique to more effectively separate structure from noise in an image, in order to aid in the denoising process. Alignment mapping allows for the extraction of more structure from the image and also the ability to understand the image structure, yielding information for edge direction, edge length, and corner locations within the image. This information can be used to smooth long edges properly and to prevent tight image details, e.g., text, from being overly smoothed. In alignment maps, the amount of noise may be used to compute thresholds and scaling parameters used in the preparation of the alignment map. According to some embodiments, a feature map may also be created for the image. Finally, the image may be smoothed using the created feature map as a mask.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 29, 2015Publication date: December 3, 2015Inventor: Mark Zimmer
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Publication number: 20150317772Abstract: Systems and methods for reducing chrominance (chroma) noise in image data are provided. In one example of such a method, image data in YCC format may be received into logic of an image signal processor. Using the logic, noise may be filtered from a first chrominance component or a second chrominance component, or both, of the image data, using a sparse filter and a noise threshold. The noise threshold may be determined based at least in part on two of the components of the YCC image data.Type: ApplicationFiled: July 10, 2015Publication date: November 5, 2015Inventors: Suk Hwan Lim, Mark Zimmer