Methods and apparatus for detecting a composition of an audience of an information presenting device

An apparatus to detect a composition of an audience of an information presenting device comprising:

• a camera to capture at least one image of the audience;
• a processor;
• a memory storing computer readable instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to:
• determine a number of people within the at least one image;
• develop a prompt signal requesting the audience to identify its members if a change in the number of people is visually detected;
• and
• an output device responsive to the prompt signal to output an indication requesting the audience to identify its members;
• and
• if a number of members identified by the audience is different from the determined number of people after a number of prompts of the audience, the computer readable instructions cause the processor to adjust a value to avoid excessive prompting of the audience.

A computer readable medium storing machine readable instructions which, when executed, cause at least one machine to:

• capture at least one image of an audience consuming a program;
• determine a number of people within the at least one image;
• output a prompt signal requesting the audience to identify its members if a change in the number of people is detected from the at least one image;
• and
• if a number of members identified by the audience is different from the determined number of people after a number of prompts of the audience, the computer readable instructions cause the at least one machine to adjust a value to avoid excessive prompting of the audience.

An apparatus to detect a composition of an audience of an information presenting device comprising:

• an image sensor to capture at least one image of the audience;
• a people counter to determine a number of people in the at least one image;
• a change detector to compare the number of people in the at least one image to a value representative of a previous number of people in the audience;
• a prompter to request the audience to identify its members if the change detector identifies a difference between the number of people in the at least one image and the value representative of the previous number of people in the audience;
• and
• an input device to receive data from the audience.