Visual Privacy Protection System
AssigneeWisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
InventorsXinyu Zhang, Chi Zhang, Shilin Zhu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A visual privacy system unilaterally blocks rolling shutter cameras by providing a periodically interrupted ambient light source imposing bright and dark bands on the image yet at a frequency imperceptible to human observers in the environment. Communication of the modulation pattern to authorized cameras allows unaffected imaging in these regions by authorized individuals. The system also contemplates operation in a barcoding mode with a light modulation providing embedded barcodes that can be extracted from images taken in the region to indicate that the images were improperly acquired and to block the images in certain applications.
Claims11
A method of preventing piracy of visual images comprising:
- (a) displaying a visual image;
- (b) modulating a brightness of the entire visual image at a frequency above the flicker fusion rate to impose a barcode in a recording of the visual image taken by a rolling frame shutter camera, the modulation encoding a predetermined data pattern indicating the visual image was recorded without permission;
- and
- (c) extracting the data pattern from the recording to identify piracy of the visual image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.