Patents by Inventor Yingying Zhong

Yingying Zhong 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).

  • Publication number: 20250061634
    Abstract: Systems and methods of the present disclosure include animating virtual avatars or agents according to input audio and one or more selected or determined emotions and/or styles. For example, a deep neural network can be trained to output motion or deformation information for a character that is representative of the character uttering speech contained in audio input. The character can have different facial components or regions (e.g., head, skin, eyes, tongue) modeled separately, such that the network can output motion or deformation information for each of these different facial components. During training, the network can use a transformer-based audio encoder with locked parameters to train an associated decoder using a weighted feature vector. The network output can be provided to a renderer to generate audio-driven facial animation that is emotion-accurate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 28, 2023
    Publication date: February 20, 2025
    Inventors: Zhengyu Huang, Rui Zhang, Tao Li, Yingying Zhong, Weihua Zhang, Junjie Lai, Yeongho Seol, Dmitry Korobchenko, Simon Yuen
  • Publication number: 20250029307
    Abstract: In various examples, a technique for audio-driven facial animation with adaptive speech includes determining that a rate of speech associated with an audio segment exceeds a threshold. The technique also includes based at least on the rate of speech exceeding the threshold, upsampling a first set of features associated with the audio segment into a second set of features that is different in size than the first set of features. The technique further includes generating, using one or more machine learning models and based at least on at least a subset of the second set of features, a facial animation output corresponding to the audio segment.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 1, 2023
    Publication date: January 23, 2025
    Inventors: Zhengyu HUANG, Dmitry KOROBCHENKO, Junjie LAI, Tao LI, Yeongho SEOL, Rui ZHANG, Weihua ZHANG, Yingying ZHONG
  • Publication number: 20240412440
    Abstract: In various examples, techniques are described for animating characters by decoupling portions of a face from other portions of the face. Systems and methods are disclosed that use one or more neural networks to generate high-fidelity facial animation using inputted audio data. In order to generate the high-fidelity facial animations, the systems and methods may decouple effects of implicit emotional states from effects of audio on the facial animations during training of the neural network(s). For instance, the training may cause the audio to drive the lower face animations while the implicit emotional states drive the upper face animations. In some examples, in order to encourage more expressive expressions, adversarial training is further used to learn a discriminator that predicts if generated emotional states are from real distribution.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 6, 2023
    Publication date: December 12, 2024
    Inventors: Rui Zhang, Zhengyu Huang, Lance Li, Weihua Zhang, Yingying Zhong, Junjie Lai, Yeongho Seol, Dmitry Korobchenko
  • Patent number: 11797649
    Abstract: A system includes a hardware processor and a memory storing a software code including a predictive model. The hardware processor executes the software code to receive an input including an image having a pixel anomaly, and image data identifying the location of the pixel anomaly in the image. The software code uses the predictive model to extract a global feature map of a global image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the global image region; to extract a local feature map of a local image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the local image region and the local image region being smaller than the global image region; and to predict, based on the global feature map and the local feature map, a distraction level of the pixel anomaly within the image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 3, 2022
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2023
    Assignee: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
    Inventors: Erika Varis Doggett, David T. Nguyen, Erick Keyu Qi, Yingying Zhong, Weichu Cui, Anna M. Wolak
  • Publication number: 20230028420
    Abstract: A system includes a hardware processor and a memory storing a software code including a predictive model. The hardware processor executes the software code to receive an input including an image having a pixel anomaly, and image data identifying the location of the pixel anomaly in the image. The software code uses the predictive model to extract a global feature map of a global image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the global image region; to extract a local feature map of a local image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the local image region and the local image region being smaller than the global image region; and to predict, based on the global feature map and the local feature map, a distraction level of the pixel anomaly within the image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 3, 2022
    Publication date: January 26, 2023
    Inventors: Erika Varis Doggett, David T. Nguyen, Erick Keyu Qi, Yingying Zhong, Weichu Cui, Anna M. Wolak
  • Patent number: 11494584
    Abstract: A system includes a hardware processor and a memory storing a software code including a predictive model. The hardware processor executes the software code to receive an input including an image having a pixel anomaly, and image data identifying the location of the pixel anomaly in the image. The software code uses the predictive model to extract a global feature map of a global image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the global image region; to extract a local feature map of a local image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the local image region and the local image region being smaller than the global image region; and to predict, based on the global feature map and the local feature map, a distraction level of the pixel anomaly within the image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 12, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2022
    Assignee: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
    Inventors: Erika Varis Doggett, David T. Nguyen, Erick Keyu Qi, Yingying Zhong, Weichu Cui, Anna M. Wolak
  • Publication number: 20220222487
    Abstract: A system includes a hardware processor and a memory storing a software code including a predictive model. The hardware processor executes the software code to receive an input including an image having a pixel anomaly, and image data identifying the location of the pixel anomaly in the image. The software code uses the predictive model to extract a global feature map of a global image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the global image region; to extract a local feature map of a local image region of the image, the pixel anomaly being located within the local image region and the local image region being smaller than the global image region; and to predict, based on the global feature map and the local feature map, a distraction level of the pixel anomaly within the image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 12, 2021
    Publication date: July 14, 2022
    Inventors: Erika Varis Doggett, David T. Nguyen, Erick Keyu Qi, Yingying Zhong, Weichu Cui, Anna M. Wolak
  • Publication number: 20200180099
    Abstract: The invention discloses a glass bottle mouth fine grinding device, which includes a working box and a working chamber located in the working box. A placing box is slidably arranged in the working chamber. The placing box is provided with a placing chamber. A glass bottle is slidably disposed in the placement cavity, and first cavities are symmetrically arranged on the left and right sides of the placement cavity. A circular clamping block is slidably disposed in the first cavity. The first cavity is connected by a first spring, and a second cavity is provided at the bottom of the placing box. A sliding block is slidably disposed in the second cavity, and the sliding block and the second cavity are connected by a second spring.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 14, 2020
    Publication date: June 11, 2020
    Inventor: Yingying Zhong
  • Publication number: 20200180098
    Abstract: The invention discloses a glass bottle mouth fine grinding device, which includes a working box and a working chamber located in the working box. A placing box is slidably arranged in the working chamber. The placing box is provided with a placing chamber. A glass bottle is slidably disposed in the placement cavity, and first cavities are symmetrically arranged on the left and right sides of the placement cavity. A circular clamping block is slidably disposed in the first cavity. The first cavity is connected by a first spring, and a second cavity is provided at the bottom of the placing box. A sliding block is slidably disposed in the second cavity, and the sliding block and the second cavity are connected by a second spring.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 14, 2020
    Publication date: June 11, 2020
    Inventor: Yingying Zhong