Privacy protection in mobile robot
AssigneeCobalt Robotics Inc.
InventorsErik Schluntz, Travis J. Deyle, Michael O'Kelley, Ashu Gupta
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A mobile robot is configured for operation in a commercial or industrial setting, such as an office building or retail store. The mobile robot may include cameras for capturing images and videos and include microphones for capturing audio of its surroundings. To improve privacy by preventing confidential information from being transmitted, the mobile robot may detect text in images and modify the images to make the text illegible before transmitting the images. The mobile robot may also detect human voice in audio and modify audio to make the human voice unintelligible before transmitting the audio.
Claims20
A mobile robot comprising:
- a motorized base configured to move the mobile robot;
- a wireless transceiver configured to communicatively couple to a server;
- a housing body storing a camera configured to capture images of an environment surrounding the mobile robot and a microphone configured to capture an audio signal from the environment;
- and
- a controller configured to:
- receive images of the environment from the camera;
- detect text in the images;
- responsive to detecting the text, determine whether to modify the images based in part on a semantic map that stores information describing the environment;
- responsive to determining to modify the images, generate a bounding box around the text in the images;
- modifying the images within the bounding box to make the text illegible;
- and
- transmit the modified images to the server.
A method comprising:
- capturing, by a mobile robot, images of an environment surrounding the mobile robot;
- detecting, by the mobile robot, text in the images;
- responsive to detecting the text, determining, by the mobile robot, whether to modify the images based in part on a semantic map that stores information describing the environment;
- responsive to determining to modify the images, generating, by the mobile robot, a bounding box around the text in the images;
- modifying, by the mobile robot, the images within the bounding box to make the text illegible, and
- transmitting, by the mobile robot, the modified images to a server.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer program instructions, the instructions when executed by a processor causing the processor to:
- capture images of an environment surrounding a mobile robot;
- detect text in the images;
- responsive to detecting the text, determine whether to modify the images based in part on a semantic map that stores information describing the environment;
- responsive to determining to modify the images, generate a bounding box around the text in the images;
- modify the images within the bounding box to make the text illegible, and
- transmit the modified images to a server.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.