Cover Glass Touch Sensor for Monitoring Camera False Alarm Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Monitoring cameras often experience false alarms and blurry images due to raindrops or dust on the camera's cover glass, which cannot distinguish between objects close to the lens and those at a distance, leading to improper focus and exposure settings.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating a touch sensor in the camera's cover glass to differentiate between objects on or near the glass and distant objects of interest, allowing the camera to control image capturing and processing units to ignore or reduce the weight of image data from the affected regions, thereby improving focus, exposure, and reducing false alarms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the camera uses standard image capturing without touch sensor integration, then the device complexity is low, but false alarms occur due to inability to distinguish raindrops from distant objects
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the touch sensor functionality with the camera's cover glass, creating an integrated system where the cover glass serves both as a protective barrier and as a sensing element. This combination allows the camera to detect objects touching or close to the cover glass without adding separate external sensors, thereby reducing false alarms while minimizing additional device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The cover glass is designed to perform multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a protective cover for the lens and as a touch sensor for detecting nearby objects. This multi-functionality allows the system to distinguish between raindrops on the cover and distant objects of interest without requiring separate dedicated components, improving reliability while controlling complexity.
2Measurement precision
If the camera focuses on objects touching the cover glass, then close objects are detected, but the actual scene becomes blurry and difficult to see
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the image data into two categories: regions corresponding to objects detected by the touch sensor on the cover glass, and regions representing the actual scene. By separating these regions, the camera can process and analyze them differently - detecting touch objects for alarm suppression while maintaining focus settings optimized for distant scene objects, thus preventing blurriness in the actual scene.
Solution Approach 2:
The camera applies different processing qualities to different regions of the image based on touch sensor data. Regions where touch objects are detected receive special handling (such as being excluded from focus calculations or event detection), while the rest of the image maintains standard high-quality processing. This local differentiation ensures accurate detection of cover objects without compromising the overall image quality of the monitored scene.
3Reliability
If the camera includes touch sensor integration in the cover glass, then false alarms are reduced by distinguishing raindrops from distant objects, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The touch sensor is integrated directly into the cover glass structure, merging two previously separate components (cover glass and sensor) into a single unified element. This integration allows the camera to detect objects touching or close to the cover glass without adding external sensor assemblies, thereby improving object differentiation capability while minimizing the increase in device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The cover glass is designed to perform multiple functions simultaneously: it serves as a protective cover for the lens and as a touch sensor for detecting nearby objects. This multi-functionality allows the system to distinguish between raindrops on the cover and distant objects of interest without requiring separate dedicated components, improving reliability while controlling complexity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution enhances image quality and reduces false alarms by accurately distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant objects, ensuring that only meaningful events trigger alerts and maintaining clear images of the monitored scene.
Implementation Method 1
The touch sensor may comprise at least one of a capacitive touch sensor or an optical in-glass sensor
Data Source
AI summary
A monitoring camera is equipped with a touch sensor in a camera cover glass, which senses positions of objects touching or being close to the cover glass. The touch sensor aids the camera in separating image data depicting objects on the cover glass from image data depicting the monitored scene. This information may be used when choosing image capture settings, by indicating to the camera which image regions are less important to take into account, and to avoid false alarms which otherwise may occur when rain drops or insects on the cover glass are mistaken for events in the scene.