Abstract: Embodiments of an apparatus for signal conditioning, a serial data interface, and a method for a programmable delay filter are disclosed. In an embodiment of an apparatus for signal conditioning, a wave shaping circuit has a precursor signal, a post cursor signal, and a main signal combined to provide an output signal. The precursor signal, the post cursor signal, and the main signal are provided for combination independently of a clock signal. The main signal is delayed relative to the precursor signal, and the post cursor signal is delayed relative to the main signal.

Abstract: Generally this disclosure describes a video communication system that replaces actual live images of the participating users with animated avatars. A method may include selecting an avatar; initiating communication; detecting a user input; identifying the user input; identifying an animation command based on the user input; generating avatar parameters; and transmitting at least one of the animation command and the avatar parameters.

Abstract: A system and method for selecting an advertisement to present to a consumer includes detecting facial regions in the image, identifying one or more consumer characteristics (mood, gender, age, etc.) of said consumer in the image, identifying one or more advertisements to present to the consumer based on a comparison of the consumer characteristics with an advertisement database including a plurality of advertisement profiles, and presenting a selected one of the identified advertisement to the consumer on a media device.

Abstract: According to one embodiment of the invention, a method includes generating a person-name Information Gain (IG)-Tree and a relation IG-Tree from annotated data. The method also includes tagging and partial parsing of an input document. The names of the persons are extracted within the input document using the person-name IG-tree. Additionally, names of organizations are extracted within the input document. The method also includes extracting entity names that are not names of persons and organizations within the input document. Further, the relations between the identified entity names are extracted using the relation-IG-tree.

Abstract: The invention provides a composition suitable for use as an animal litter comprising a first component having a density less than that of liquid and a second component having a density of at least 5 lb/ft3 (80 mg/cm3) greater than the first component. The invention is based upon the discovery that adding liquid such as urine to a composition having two components with significant differences in density, one of which is less than the density of the liquid, will result in the component with the lesser density floating to the top of the liquid while the component with the greater density will segregate below the component with the lesser density.

Abstract: A cost-effective and computationally efficient hand gesture recognition system for detecting and/or tracking a face region and/or a hand region in a series of images. A skin segmentation model is updated with skin pixel information from the face and iteratively applied to the pixels in the hand region, to more accurately identify the pixels in the hand region given current lighting conditions around the image. Shape features are then extracted from the image, and based on the shape features, a hand gesture is identified in the image. The identified hand gesture may be used to generate a command signal to control the operation of an application or system.

Abstract: Animal litters and methods of making and using such litters are disclosed herein. The animal litters comprise (a) a plurality of absorbent particles comprising (i) a non-swelling particle and (ii) a clumping material coated on the non-swelling particle and (b) a plurality of one or more filler particles that are not associated with the absorbent particles. The filler particles provide additional functionality to the litters, e.g., controlling odor, absorbing moisture, releasing fragrance, controlling microorganisms, controlling dust, reducing density, reducing weight, and combinations thereof. The litters are made by producing the absorbent particles using conventional means and combining the absorbent particles with one or more filler particles that impart the desired characteristic to the litters.

Abstract: A method for extracting vanadium from shale, the method including: a) grinding the shale into fine powders, mixing the fine powders with an additive in a mass ratio of 1:0.04-0.12 to yield a mixture, heating the mixture to a temperature of between 850 and 950° C. at a heating rate of 5-9° C./min, and baking the mixture for between 30 and 90 min; b) immersing the product in water and acid respectively to yield a first solution and a second solution, combining the two solutions, and performing ion exchange adsorption on the combined solution using a styrene-divinylbenzene based macroporous anion-exchange resin; and c) performing desorption, purification, and precipitation to yield poly ammonium vanadate, and calcining the poly ammonium vanadate at a temperature of between 450 and 530° C. for between 20 and 50 min to yield V2O5.

Abstract: Methods, apparatuses, and articles associated with gesture recognition using depth images are disclosed herein. In various embodiments, an apparatus may include a face detection engine configured to determine whether a face is present in one or more gray images of respective image frames generated by a depth camera, and a hand tracking engine configured to track a hand in one or more depth images generated by the depth camera. The apparatus may further include a feature extraction and gesture inference engine configured to extract features based on results of the tracking by the hand tracking engine, and infer a hand gesture based at least in part on the extracted features. Other embodiments may also be disclosed and claimed.

Abstract: Apparatuses, systems, and computer program products that detect and/or index characters of videos are disclosed. One or more embodiments comprise an apparatus an apparatus having a feature extraction module and a cast indexing module. The feature extraction module may extract features of a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) for face sets of a video and the cast indexing module may detect one or more characters of the video via one or more associations of clusters of the features. Some alternative embodiments may include a cast ranking module to sort characters of the video, considering such factors as appearance times of the characters, appearance frequencies of the characters, and page rankings of the characters. The apparatus may associate or partition the clusters based on a normalized cut process, as well as detect the characters based on measures of distances of nodes associated with the features.

Abstract: A multi-core processor system may support 3D image rendering on an autostereoscopic display. The 3D image rendering includes pre-processing of depth map and 3D image wrapping tasks. The pre-processing of depth map may include a foreground prior depth image smoothing technique, which may perform a depth gradient detection and a smoothing task. The depth gradient detection task may detect areas with large depth gradient and the smoothing task may transform the large depth gradient into a linearly changing shape using low-strength, low-pass filtering techniques. The 3D image wrapping may include vectorizing the code for 3D image wrapping of row pixels using an efficient single instruction multiple data (SIMD) technique. After vectorizing, an API such as OpenMP may be used to parallelize the 3D image wrapping procedure. The 3D image wrapping using OpenMP may be performed on rows of the 3D image and on images of the multiple view images.

Abstract: A video communication system that replaces actual live images of the participating users with animated avatars. A method may include selecting an avatar, initiating communication, capturing an image, detecting a face in the image, determining facial characteristics from the face, including eye movement and eyelid movement of a user indicative of direction of user gaze and blinking, respectively, converting the facial features to avatar parameters, and transmitting at least one of the avatar selection or avatar parameters.

Abstract: Detecting facial landmarks in a face detected in an image may be performed by first cropping a face rectangle region of the detected face in the image and generating an integral image based at least in part on the face rectangle region. Next, a cascade classifier may be executed for each facial landmark of the face rectangle region to produce one response image for each facial landmark based at least in part on the integral image. A plurality of Active Shape Model (ASM) initializations may be set up. ASM searching may be performed for each of the ASM initializations based at least in part on the response images, each ASM search resulting in a search result having a cost. Finally, a search result of the ASM searches having a lowest cost function may be selected, the selected search result indicating locations of the facial landmarks in the image.

Abstract: Generation of a personalized 3D morphable model of a user's face may be performed first by capturing a 2D image of a scene by a camera. Next, the user's face may be detected in the 2D image and 2D landmark points of the user's face may be detected in the 2D image. Each of the detected 2D landmark points may be registered to a generic 3D face model. Personalized facial components may be generated in real time to represent the user's face mapped to the generic 3D face model to form the personalized 3D morphable model. The personalized 3D morphable model may be displayed to the user. This process may be repeated in real time for a live video sequence of 2D images from the camera.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for capturing and representing 3D wire-frame, color and shading of facial expressions are provided, wherein the method includes the following steps: storing a plurality of feature data sequences, each of the feature data sequences corresponding to one of the plurality of facial expressions; and retrieving one of the feature data sequences based on user facial feature data; and mapping the retrieved feature data sequence to an avatar face. The method may advantageously provide improvements in execution speed and communications bandwidth.

Abstract: Methods, apparatuses, and articles associated with gesture recognition using depth images are disclosed herein. In various embodiments, an apparatus may include a face detection engine configured to determine whether a face is present in one or more gray images of respective image frames generated by a depth camera, and a hand tracking engine configured to track a hand in one or more depth images generated by the depth camera. The apparatus may further include a feature extraction and gesture inference engine configured to extract features based on results of the tracking by the hand tracking engine, and infer a hand gesture based at least in part on the extracted features. Other embodiments may also be disclosed and claimed.

Abstract: Methods, apparatuses, and articles associated with face recognition login, social network and video chat are disclosed herein. In various embodiments, an apparatus may include a networking interface, and a face recognition based controller configured to determine whether a user is watching a television, based on image frames of a video signal generated by a camera. The controller may be further configured to transmit a login request, via the network interface, to a server associated with a social network, on determination that the user is watching the television, to log the user into the social network, and enabling video chat. Other embodiments may be disclosed and/or claimed.

Abstract: Systems, apparatus, articles, and methods are described including operations to detect a face based at least in part on video data. A region of interest and a background region may be determined based at least in part on the detected face. The background region may be modified to have a reduced image quality.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed to index digital frames. An example method includes identifying channel types associated with a plurality of image frames, splitting each one of the plurality of image frames into a respective color channel based on the identified channel types, applying a local binary pattern to each of the respective color channels to generate a respective pattern number, generating a spatial representation of each respective pattern number to determine transition probabilities for each channel type, and identifying a degree of similarity between the plurality of image frames based on the transition probabilities.

Abstract: Methods, apparatuses and storage medium associated with cooperative annotation and/or recommendation by shared and personal devices. In various embodiments, at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium may include a number of instructions configured to enable a personal device (PD) of a user, in response to execution of the instructions by the personal device, to receive a user input selecting performance of a user function in association with a video stream being rendered on a shared video device (SVD) configured for use by multiple users, render an image frame of the video stream rendered on the shared video device at a time proximate to a time of the user input, and facilitate performance of the user function, which may include annotation of video objects. Other embodiments, including recommendation of video content, may be disclosed or claimed.