Video telephone headset
AssigneeCambridge Technology Development, Inc.
InventorEdward Bullister
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A video telephone headset device includes a foundation which supports an image capture device, a support arm, and a convex mirror. When the foundation is held adjacent to a user's head, the support arm positions the convex mirror in a fixed position in front of the user's face. The mirror reflects the full facial image to the image capture device. This arrangement makes it possible to construct a video telephone headset which is simple and small in size yet able to capture the full face and facial expressions using very little bandwidth.
Claims18
A method for simulating eye-to-eye contact in a videoconference, including the steps of:
- displaying an image of a remote face on a local display, said local display located in a first position;
- collecting an image of a local face through a camera located in a second position, said second position offset from the line of sight directed from said local face toward said first position;
- and,
- shifting the viewing perspective point of said camera in said collected image from said second position to a third position, said shift including a lateral component such that said third position is adjacent to said line of sight from said local face to said first position,
- whereby said camera can remain visually unobtrusive and said lateral shift in perspective allows the view collected by said visually unobtrusive camera to appear to be from a perspective point located on said line of sight such that eye-to-eye contact is simulated.
A method for collecting a facial image for videoconferencing, including the steps of:
- collecting an image of a wearer's face through a head-mounted face-capture camera, said camera located in a first position with respect to said face;
- and
- abstracting a parametric image model representation of said facial image,
- whereby said parametric image model can be transmitted with less bandwidth than the original said collected image.
An integrated device for mobile videoconferencing, including:
- a foundation,
- a head-mounted face-capture camera that is supported by said foundation and capable of capturing a facial image of a user, and,
- a parametric facial image compression CODEC,
- whereby said integrated device can capture said facial image and compress said facial image with said CODEC to a parametric facial model representation, and whereby the reduced quantity of data in said parametric representation can be communicated from said integrated device using a communications link of reduced bandwidth.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.