Abstract: Systems and methods for sensor-agnostic representation of human presence information are described. An operating system of a computing device with a display screen is configured to receive, from a sensor system, human presence information representing the position and posture of one or more persons detected by a sensor of the sensor system, where the human presence information is determined based on a coordinate system associated with the display screen. The human presence information has the same format regardless of the sensor technology. The human presence information includes an elevation angle, an azimuth angle, a face pitch, a face roll, and/or a face yaw of the person relative to the sensor and/or display screen. The operating system may use the human presence information to implement privacy-related features and/or may provide the human presence information to one or more applications via an API.

Abstract: A device receives a sensor payload at a sensor service. The sensor payload includes a data field that comprises a first value that corresponds to a reading by a sensor device. The device sends the sensor payload to a broker process that is separate from the sensor service and that hosts plug-in logic. The device receives a sensor payload update from the broker process. The sensor payload update includes a second value for the data field that is different from the first value. The second value was determined by the plug-in logic. The device creates a modified sensor payload from the sensor payload, including updating the data field to comprise the second value. The device initiates an operating system action based on the modified sensor payload.

Abstract: A computer system receives a sensor payload from a human presence sensor that is associated with the computer system. The computer system determines, based on an arbitration policy, that the computer system is enabled to perform a particular action based on the priority of the human presence sensor. The arbitration policy determines the priority of the human presence sensor among a plurality of human presence sensors that are associated with the computer system. The computer system triggers the particular action based on the computer system being enabled to perform the particular action based on the content of the sensor payload.

Abstract: User engagement is detected and used to control operation of a computing device. User engagement is detected by a sensor such as a camera that identifies if a user's face is oriented towards a display device. If the user is not facing the display device, the sensor determines that the user is unengaged. The computing device is thus able to perform a power-saving operation, such as dimming the display device, when the user is unengaged. The computing device includes an API that abstracts sensor data into a user engagement signal indicating that the user is either engaged or unengaged. The OS and applications running on the computing device act on the user engagement signal provided by the API without communicating directly with the sensor. The user engagement signal may be provided as an input to a state machine.