Image-based occupancy detector
AssigneeIDEAL Industries Lighting LLC
InventorsJohn Roberts, Ronald W. Bessems, Robert Bowser
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image sensor includes an active pixel array including a number of pixels and image sensor control circuitry configured to perform a read operation only on a subset of the pixels of the active pixel array such that pixels not in the subset remain inactive. By reading out only the subset of pixels in the active pixel array and keeping the remaining pixels inactive, the temperature of the active pixel array may be reduced compared to a conventional read out process, thereby reducing thermal noise in the resulting pixel data.
Claims20
An intelligent lighting module, comprising:
- an image sensor comprising:
- an active pixel array comprising a plurality of pixels;
- and
- image sensor control circuitry configured to:
- operate in a first mode of operation wherein the image sensor control circuitry is configured to perform read operations only on a subset of the plurality of pixels such that the plurality of pixels that are not in the subset of the plurality of pixels remain inactive;
- and
- operate in a second mode of operation wherein the image sensor control circuitry is configured to perform a read operation on all of the plurality of pixels;
- and
- control circuitry configured to:
- when the image senor control circuitry operates in the first mode of operation, obtain pixel data for the subset of the plurality of pixels from the image sensor;
- analyze the pixel data to classify an object detected by the image sensor as an occupant or a non-occupant;
- and
- in response to classifying the object as an occupant, cause the image sensor control circuitry to operate in the second mode of operation.
A method for detecting occupancy, the method comprising:
- obtaining pixel data from an image sensor by performing read operations only on a subset of pixels in an active pixel array of the image sensor such that pixels in the active pixel array that are not in the subset of pixels remain inactive;
- and
- analyzing the pixel data to classify an object detected by the image sensor as an occupant or a non-occupant;
- and
- in response to classifying the object as an occupant, obtaining additional pixel data from the image sensor by performing a read operation on all pixels in the active pixel array of the image sensor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.