Notification generation method, mobile processing device and system for resource-constrained devices

Abstract

The invention relates to a computer-implemented method for offloading notification processing, comprising the steps of: receiving an electronic communication on a mobile processing device; generating a notification on the mobile processing device based on the electronic communication; generating a notification image on the mobile processing device based on the notification by converting a portion of the notification containing at least one character into an image; transmitting the notification image from the mobile processing device to a resource-constrained device over a wireless network. It further relates to a mobile processing device adapted to perform the above method and a system for offloading notification processing.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention relates to a computer-implemented method, a mobile processing device, and a system for generating notifications for resource-constrained devices. Background Technology

[0002] The rise of resource-constrained devices in recent years has been driven by a number of factors, including the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), the expansion of edge computing, cost considerations, focus on energy efficiency, advancements in miniaturization technology, and the widespread adoption of connectivity technologies. These devices are designed for specific tasks in resource-constrained environments to balance functionality, efficiency, and cost.

[0003] Due to their resource-constrained nature, these devices typically have low processing power due to hardware limitations and / or limited autonomy in power supply. This lack of processing power contrasts sharply with the increasing functionality offered by modern telecommunications systems, which can be highly demanding in terms of computing power and / or power usage.

[0004] Hardware limitations in resource-constrained devices may result in low onboard memory capacity, thus preventing the device from storing data that can be used to display to the user or process communications.

[0005] Typical electronic messages often contain characters. In this context, the term "character" refers to an abstract entity that represents a symbol or written unit, such as a letter, number, punctuation mark, or emoji. Examples include "A", "7", "@", etc. " is a non-restrictive example of a character.

[0006] Typically, characters themselves are not transmitted; instead, they are encoded by the sending mobile processing device (usually through an encoding system such as ASCII or Unicode, for example, for letters, or for emojis, or by associating them with a unique string, for example, for emojis, although this encoding method has been superseded by the Unicode standard in recent years). The encoded characters are then transmitted to the receiving mobile processing device. In the receiving mobile processing device, the encoded characters are decoded, and the corresponding characters are displayed. The decoding and display processes require memory and / or computing power. Therefore, both the sending and receiving devices must have dedicated storage and processing capabilities.

[0007] Furthermore, certain alphabets require special text processing within the terminal to display the original text correctly. For example, Arabic and Hebrew include letters, accent marks, etc., which are position-dependent, meaning they vary according to their position within a word or sentence (context-shaping). Therefore, punctuation may require specific alignment based on the position of these letters, and / or connections between consecutive letters may need to be calculated for visually satisfactory rendering. All these special characteristics make text processing computationally intensive, but also require more memory to store all the necessary glyphs and the code used to perform the rendering of the original text on the display.

[0008] Therefore, notifications containing such characters require more space in the memory storage of the sending device and on the receiving device, especially for the representation or rendering of the characters.

[0009] Although resource-constrained devices may not be designed to display the full content of electronic messages (such as SMS, email, or instant messages), they typically at least support notification services that alert users of resource-constrained devices to electronic communications.

[0010] Such notifications can include various forms of visual information, such as structured / unstructured text, portions of the communication content, logos, images, etc. Therefore, the processing cost of generating and / or displaying such notifications may be prohibitively high, making it impossible to perform this operation on resource-constrained devices without compromising their autonomy and / or processing capabilities.

[0011] Document US20150020081A1 discloses a method for notifying an external device that a user message has been received on a digital device paired with that external device. The notification (possibly integrating visual elements) is generated in the digital device and transmitted as a whole to the external device. Specifically, this requires transmitting all the information necessary for processing the notification on the external device (e.g., font, line breaks, specific encoding) from the digital device to the external device, and the external device needs to have sufficient computing power to process the notification and / or sufficient onboard memory to store a database (e.g., a character encoding database).

[0012] Therefore, it is desirable to develop a solution that allows users of resource-constrained devices to be notified of events that have occurred on paired devices that require their attention, while taking into account the hardware and / or software limitations of resource-constrained devices. Summary of the Invention

[0013] One object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for notification processing on resource-constrained devices, which overcomes the disadvantages and limitations of the prior art.

[0014] Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system that allows resource-constrained devices to display a wider range of notifications.

[0015] Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for increasing the autonomy of resource-constrained devices capable of displaying notifications.

[0016] According to the present invention, these objectives are achieved by the subject matter of the appended claims, particularly by a computer-implemented method for offloading notification processing, comprising the following steps: Electronic communications are received by mobile processing devices; The mobile processing device generates a notification based on electronic communication to notify the user of the mobile processing device that electronic communication has been received on the mobile processing device. A notification image is generated by a mobile processing device by converting a portion of the notification containing at least one character into an image. The notification image is transmitted from the mobile processing device to the resource-constrained device via a wireless network to notify the user on the resource-constrained device that a notification has been received on the mobile processing device.

[0017] Advantageously, delegating all processing related to notification generation to the mobile processing device allows resource-constrained devices to display characters that would normally require processing / rendering. In particular, resource-constrained devices become able to display emojis or render characters for languages ​​that require additional processing, such as Arabic or Hebrew.

[0018] Another advantage of this invention is that it allows resource-constrained devices to display characters that were not initially supported by the device's firmware / software without requiring updates. In particular, it allows resource-constrained devices to display new emojis or new languages ​​without updating the embedded firmware / software.

[0019] According to some embodiments, delegating all processing related to notification generation to a mobile processing device advantageously allows for the protection of the battery of resource-constrained devices and extends their autonomy.

[0020] In this context, the expression "convert a portion of a notification containing at least one character into an image" means transforming a portion of a notification containing at least one character into an image. In other words, the notification image is an image representation of at least one character.

[0021] Surprisingly, generating an image representation of at least one character in the notification (as well as an image representation of the notification itself, which may be generated on a mobile processing device) and transmitting that notification image instead of the notification itself allows for power savings on resource-constrained devices by offloading notification processing from resource-constrained devices.

[0022] In one embodiment, the computer-implemented method includes the step of displaying a notification image on a display of a resource-constrained device.

[0023] In one embodiment, the computer-implemented method includes a step of processing the notification by a mobile processing device after the step of generating the notification and before the step of generating the notification image.

[0024] In one embodiment, the steps for processing a notification by a mobile processing device include textshaping, word and / or line breaking, bidirectional text support, and / or text rendering. This step is particularly useful when using both RTL (right-to-left) and LTR (left-to-right) languages ​​simultaneously, and it is performed on a mobile processing device rather than a resource-constrained device. Indeed, when a notification contains two language types, the text flow adjusts accordingly, and bidirectional control characters ensure the text is displayed correctly, for example, when combining Arabic phrases with English words in the middle. The complexity of managing two text directions is precisely why bidirectional text support is important in software development and localization, and in this embodiment, bidirectional text support is performed on a mobile processing device.

[0025] In one embodiment, at least one character in the notification is a letter of an RTL language, such as Arabic characters and / or Hebrew characters.

[0026] In one embodiment, the method further includes the step of compressing the notification image to reduce the transmission cost of the notification image from the mobile processing device to the resource-constrained device.

[0027] Resource-constrained devices may include batteries with a capacity of less than 1 Ah.

[0028] Notifications generated by mobile processing devices can be push notifications used to notify users that they have received electronic communications.

[0029] In one embodiment, the resource-constrained device is a wearable device, such as a connected watch, connected wristband, fitness tracker, connected health monitoring device, or augmented reality device.

[0030] In one embodiment, the mobile processing device is a smartphone, tablet, PC, or connected watch.

[0031] In one embodiment, the step of transmitting the notification image from the mobile processing device to the resource-constrained device is performed according to a network protocol selected from the following: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, AMQP, Cellular, CoAP, DDS, LoRa, LoRaWAN, XMPP, LWM2M, MQTT, Z-Wave, Zigbee, or any proprietary radio protocol. In particular, low-power protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and LoRaWAN are preferred.

[0032] In one embodiment, the format of the notification image is selected from the group consisting of: BMP, AVIF, PNG, SVG, JPG / JPEG, BPG, WebP, CLUT-based formats, or any proprietary image format.

[0033] These objectives are also achieved by a mobile processing device, characterized in that it is adapted to perform the computer-implemented methods described above.

[0034] In one embodiment, the mobile processing device is a smartphone, tablet, PC, or connected watch.

[0035] These objectives are also achieved through a system for offloading notification processing, including: The mobile processing device according to the present invention; Resource-constrained devices that connect to mobile processing devices via wireless networks.

[0036] In one embodiment, the resource-constrained device is a wearable device, such as a smartwatch, a smart bracelet, or an augmented reality device.

[0037] In one embodiment, the wireless network operates according to a network protocol selected from the following: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, AMQP, Cellular, CoAP, DDS, LoRa, LoRaWAN, XMPP, LWM2M, MQTT, Z-Wave, Zigbee, or any proprietary radio protocol. In particular, low-power protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and LoRaWAN are preferred. Attached Figure Description

[0038] Exemplary embodiments of the present invention are disclosed in the description and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein: Figure 1 This is a flowchart of the main steps of the present invention.

[0039] Figure 2 This is a flowchart of the main steps of the present invention, including an optional compression step.

[0040] Figure 3 A system including a mobile processing device wirelessly connected to a resource-constrained device is illustrated schematically. Detailed Implementation

[0041] The present invention relates to a computer-implemented method for offloading notification processing from a resource-constrained device 30 with limited or restricted processing capabilities.

[0042] In the context of this disclosure, the term "resource-constrained device" refers to a device with limited or no processing and storage capacity, designed for low energy consumption. Such devices typically have a limited energy supply, usually with a limited battery life. As a limitation, the resource-constrained device under consideration must include a display capable of showing images to its user.

[0043] The capacity or autonomy of resource-constrained devices is typically measured in ampere-hours (Ah). In one embodiment, the resource-constrained device of the present invention has a capacity of up to 1 Ah, preferably up to 500 mAh.

[0044] In particular, the resource-constrained devices considered in this article include all types of wearable devices, such as connected watches (also known as smartwatches), connected wristbands, connected health monitoring devices, fitness trackers, security / location devices, smart glasses, augmented reality devices, smart clothing, hearing devices, payment wearables, smart patches (such as price tags), etc.

[0045] All of these resource-constrained devices 30 (examples of which can be found in) Figure 3 ) is designed for wireless connection to mobile processing devices 20 with higher processing, memory, and / or power capacity (examples of which can also be found in Figure 3 Typically, this category of mobile processing devices includes smartphones, tablets, gaming devices, wearable devices with high processing / memory / battery capacity, laptops, PCs, etc. More generally, any mobile device capable of effectively (i.e., without compromising its basic functions) processing electronic communications is considered a mobile processing device.

[0046] Some of the functionality of mobile processing device 20 can be extended to resource-constrained device 30. In particular, resource-constrained devices are well-suited for alerting their users to events occurring on their mobile processing devices, typically via notifications (also known as "push notifications"). In fact, these connected resource-constrained devices are often placed directly in the vicinity of their users or even worn by them, making it more likely that providing notifications on these devices will attract the user's attention.

[0047] However, as mentioned above, generating (i.e., processing and / or rendering) notifications based on received electronic communications may require significant processing power from the device and / or substantial onboard memory. Such requirements are typically not met by resource-constrained devices. Consequently, these requirements prevent resource-constrained devices from displaying such notifications, especially when they contain elements requiring specific rendering (emojis, specific languages ​​such as Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, etc.).

[0048] Furthermore, when using new languages, emojis, or characters to generate notifications, the database on which the rendering process relies needs to be updated. This may involve updates to the database, software, and / or firmware on the device performing the rendering. Such frequent updates are not well-suited for resource-constrained devices. In fact, resource-constrained devices may not have enough memory for new languages, emojis, or characters to be used.

[0049] The term "electronic communication" refers to any type of digital message that can be sent to the mobile processing device 20, including but not limited to email, instant messaging (i.e., real-time text communication), text messaging (i.e., SMS), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video conferencing, telephone calls, etc. Electronic communication can also refer to digital messages sent by the mobile processing device 20 itself, such as providing information about processes running on the mobile processing device 20 (e.g., software installation status, information about battery status, alarm clock, etc.).

[0050] Therefore, electronic communication can refer to any digital communication between people, between processing devices and people, or even between processing devices, without any human intervention. Any such communication can generate notifications directed to users of mobile processing devices.

[0051] refer to Figure 1 The method includes a first step of receiving electronic communication 10 on mobile processing device 20.

[0052] In response to receiving an electronic communication, the method includes a second step of generating a notification 11 on the mobile processing device 20 based on the electronic communication.

[0053] In a preferred embodiment, the mobile processing device 20 is a smartphone / tablet. In this typical embodiment, the notification may be generated by the operating system and / or directly by dedicated software (e.g., a mobile application), depending on the type of electronic communication.

[0054] In this application, the term "notification" refers to any processed element based on a received electronic communication, the purpose of which is to indicate to a user that the electronic communication has been received. Such notifications may be processed based on elements (e.g., characters) transmitted via the electronic communication and a set of rules that may be stored on the receiving device or transmitted with the communication.

[0055] Therefore, notifications typically include several different elements, such as characters (e.g., letters, numbers, punctuation marks, emoticons, etc.), icons (e.g., icons of mobile applications involved in electronic communications), and images (e.g., pictures or video frames associated with the contact person from whom the communication originated). However, in the most common cases, a notification may consist of only one character. Furthermore, it can be displayed in various ways, such as as a banner, a pop-up window, etc.

[0056] Advantageously, notifications can be push notifications, which are alerts generated by the app before the app is opened to view the content of related communications, such as pop-ups or other messages. Push notifications are typically used to notify users of new messages, updates, social media posts, etc.

[0057] Advantageously, the present invention proposes delegating the processing tasks of notifications to a mobile processing device connected to a resource-constrained device. After a notification has been generated by the mobile processing device, a notification image, including at least one image representation of the characters in the notification, is generated by the mobile processing device from the notification and transmitted to the resource-constrained device for display on its display. Therefore, it protects the resource-constrained device from processing notifications as described above, allows it to display notifications containing specific characters, emoticons, language, etc., displays new content (emoticons, characters, etc.) without updating software / firmware, and allows for the expansion of the functionality of the resource-constrained device.

[0058] Therefore, a notification image can be viewed as a text-to-image conversion, that is, an image conversion of at least one character present in the notification. A notification image may include additional elements, such as another image included in the notification.

[0059] Therefore, instead of transmitting encoded characters to a resource-constrained device and performing power-consuming processing on the resource-constrained device to generate a notification based on the encoded characters, or being unable to display characters because the representation of the characters is unavailable in the memory of the resource-constrained device, the present invention advantageously proposes transmitting an image representing the notification generated in the mobile processing device 20, typically a low-resolution or small image.

[0060] In particular, notification images representing characters or strings that require complex decoding tasks from their encoded forms can be easily displayed. For example, Arabic or Hebrew characters that require right-to-left encoding and / or hyphenation encoding in addition to the characters themselves can be easily used to notify users on resource-constrained devices without requiring onboard libraries to decode the encoded characters.

[0061] Therefore, the third step of this method includes generating a notification image 12 based on the notification on the mobile processing device 20.

[0062] Alternatively or additionally, there may be one or more processing steps prior to the generation of the notification image. As a non-limiting example, such a transformation may involve generating a frame buffer to display the text from the text content of the notification and converting it into an image.

[0063] In one embodiment, the notification image is generated considering only a portion of the notification or its content. This can be used to reduce the size of the notification image and / or purely for visual considerations.

[0064] It may also be necessary to reduce the size of the notification to create a notification image that can be efficiently transmitted to resource-constrained devices. Therefore, the method may include an optional image compression step 15, such as... Figure 2 As shown. This compression step can be part of the notification image generation, since most image formats suitable for efficient transmission already include lossless or lossy compression in their encoding. However, it can also be an additional compression step performed to comply with wireless networks and protocols used for transmitting data from mobile processing device 20 to resource-constrained device 30.

[0065] In one embodiment, this step is performed by dedicated software in the mobile processing device 20. Its execution causes the generated notification to be retrieved and a notification image to be created based on the notification.

[0066] Typically, the step of generating the notification itself is performed by the existing OS via and / or by dedicated software (e.g., an application) connected to a mobile processing device with limited resources 30.

[0067] While notification images can be in almost any image format, it is advantageous in the context of this invention to use an image format suitable for energy-efficient transmission. Typically, color lookup table (CLUT) based formats or compressed image formats are well-suited for notification images. In particular, notification images can be generated in formats such as AV1 image file format (AVIF), Portable Web Graphics (PNG), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Joint Image Experts Group (JPG / JPEG), Better Portable Graphics (BPG), WebP, and / or any custom proprietary format.

[0068] The format of notification image 13 is generally guided by the following constraints: it must be easy to process (e.g., a simple bitmap) and / or easy to compress (e.g., based on CLUT).

[0069] The method includes a fourth step of transmitting a notification image 13 from a mobile processing device 20 to a resource-constrained device 30 via a wireless network 40.

[0070] Various wireless connectivity protocols can be implemented on wireless networks. Similar to image formats, energy-efficient (low-power) protocols are preferred in the context of this invention.

[0071] In one embodiment, the wireless protocol is selected from the group consisting of: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), Mobile / Cellular Protocol, Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), Data Distribution Service (DDS), Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRa / LoRaWAN), Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), Lightweight Machine-to-Machine (LWM2M), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Z-Wave, or Zigbee. More generally, any proprietary radio protocol can be used to transmit notification images from mobile processing device 20 to resource-constrained device 30.

[0072] After transmission to resource-constrained device 30, the notification image can be displayed on display 31 of resource-constrained device 30. Display 31 can be any type of display capable of displaying image files, typically LCD, OLED, AMOLED, TFT, etc. Resource-constrained devices typically prioritize low-power display technologies to extend battery life. Therefore, display 31 is preferably a low-power display.

[0073] exist Figure 3 In the preferred embodiment shown, the mobile processing device 20 is a smartphone, and the resource-constrained device 30 is a smartwatch connected to the smartphone via a wireless network 40 (preferably via Wi-Fi or BLE). Therefore, the method of this application can be performed on these devices in the following manner: • Receiving electronic communications on a smartphone, usually emails or instant messages; • Use a dedicated app or the smartphone's mobile OS to generate notifications on the smartphone to inform the user that electronic communications (from external devices or from the smartphone itself) have been received. • Generate notification images based on notifications by converting a portion of the notification containing at least one character into an image, typically using an image format suitable for narrowband data transmission, such as WebP, SVG, BMP, or CLUT-based formats; • Use wireless networks such as Wi-Fi and BLE to transmit notification images from smartphones / tablets to smartwatches to notify the wearer of received electronic communications.

[0074] In another embodiment, the resource-constrained device is a low-power smart tile that can render pre-computed content but lacks processing power and sufficient memory to store glyphs; such a tile can be considered a battery-powered smart price tag. In this case, the mobile processing unit can broadcast notification images to the battery-powered smart price tag.

[0075] The present invention also relates to a mobile processing device 20 suitable for performing the above-described method steps.

[0076] The present invention also relates to a system suitable for performing the above method steps, comprising a mobile processing device 20 and a resource-constrained device 30 connected to the mobile processing device via a wireless network 31.

[0077] Specifically, the mobile processing device 20 is adapted to perform the following steps: • Receiving electronic communications; • Generate notifications based on electronic communications to notify users that electronic communications have been received on their mobile processing devices; • Generate notification images based on notifications by converting a portion of the notification containing at least one character into an image; • Transmit notification images from a mobile processing device to a resource-constrained device via a wireless network to notify users on the resource-constrained device that a notification has been received on the mobile processing device.

[0078] Resource-constrained device 30 is suitable for displaying notification images on a monitor.

[0079] Throughout this disclosure, the user of mobile processing device 20 and the user of resource-constrained device 30 may be the same person or two different users.

[0080] The mobile processing device for the system is typically a smartphone, tablet, PC, or connected watch.

[0081] Reference figures 10. Reception of electronic communications 11 Notification Generation 12 Notification Image Generation 13. Wireless transmission of notification images 14 Display notification images on resource-constrained devices 15 Notification of image compression 20 Mobile processing equipment 30 Resource-Constrained Equipment 31 Displays for resource-constrained devices 40 Wireless Network

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for unloading notification processing, comprising the following steps: Electronic communication (10) is received by the mobile processing device (20); The mobile processing device (20) generates a notification (11) based on electronic communication to notify the user of the mobile processing device that electronic communication has been received on the mobile processing device; The mobile processing device (20) generates a notification image (12) by converting a portion of the notification containing at least one character into an image; The notification image (13) is transmitted from the mobile processing device (20) to the resource-constrained device (30) via the wireless network (40) to notify the user of the resource-constrained device that a notification has been received on the mobile processing device (20).

2. The computer-implemented method according to claim 1, comprising the step of displaying a notification image (14) on a display (31) of a resource-constrained device (30).

3. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 2, comprising: The step of processing the notification by the mobile processing device is performed after the step of generating the notification and before the step of generating the notification image.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein processing the notification by the mobile processing device includes text shaping, word and / or line breaks, bidirectional text support, and / or text rendering.

5. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the characters are letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and / or emojis.

6. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the characters are letters of an RTL language, such as Arabic characters and / or Hebrew characters.

7. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, further comprising the following steps: Compress the notification image (15) to reduce the transmission cost of the notification image from the mobile processing device (20) to the resource-constrained device (30).

8. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the resource-constrained device (30) is a wearable device, such as a connected watch, a connected wristband, a fitness tracker, a connected health monitoring device, an augmented reality device, or a smart patch.

9. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the resource-constrained device (30) includes a battery with a capacity of less than 1 Ah.

10. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the mobile processing device (20) is a smartphone, tablet computer, PC, or connected watch.

11. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 10, wherein the step of transmitting the notification image (13) from the mobile processing device (20) to the resource-constrained device (30) is performed according to a network protocol selected from the following: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, AMQP, Cellular, CoAP, DDS, LoRa, LoRaWAN, XMPP, LWM2M, MQTT, Z-Wave, or Zigbee.

12. The computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 11, wherein the format of the notification image is selected from the group consisting of: AVIF, PNG, SVG, JPG / JPEG, BPG, WebP, BMP or a CLUT-based format.

13. A mobile processing device (20) for unloading notification processing, characterized in that, It is suitable for performing the computer-implemented method according to any one of claims 1 to 12.

14. The mobile processing device (20) according to claim 13 is a smartphone, tablet computer, PC or connected watch.

15. A system for unloading notification processing, comprising: The mobile processing device (20) according to any one of claims 13 or 14; Resource-constrained devices (30) that connect to mobile processing devices via wireless networks (40).

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