Facial-Cue Accessibility Detection for Timely Social Notifications
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems fail to accurately determine the accessibility for smooth communication with others, as they do not consider factors such as face orientation, facial expression, and distance, leading to ineffective communication attempts.
Innovation Solution
An accessibility determination device that captures images, analyzes facial organs to determine face orientation, moving direction, and facial expression, and notifies the user when a target person is within a predetermined accessibility threshold, adjusting for distance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If position transition is used to determine accessibility, then device complexity is reduced, but measurement precision deteriorates because it cannot detect face orientation, facial expression, or distance factors
Solution Approach 1:
The accessibility determination is segmented into multiple independent detection components: facial organ detection, face orientation detection, facial expression detection, and distance measurement. Each component analyzes a specific aspect of the person's state, and the results are combined to determine overall accessibility. This segmentation allows the system to achieve high measurement precision by considering multiple factors simultaneously.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from one-dimensional position transition detection to multi-dimensional accessibility assessment by adding face orientation, facial expression, and distance as additional dimensions. This dimensional expansion enables the device to capture the complexity of social interaction cues without significantly increasing device complexity, as these new dimensions are extracted from image data using established computer vision techniques.
2Measurement precision
If multiple factors (face orientation, facial expression, distance) are considered to improve measurement precision, then accessibility determination accuracy is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The imaging device serves multiple functions: capturing facial organs for detection, determining face orientation, analyzing facial expressions, and measuring distance. By making the imaging device multi-functional, the system avoids adding separate dedicated sensors for each function, thereby improving measurement precision while controlling device complexity growth.
Solution Approach 2:
The processor acts as an intermediary that receives image data from the imaging device and performs complex analysis to extract face orientation, facial expression, and distance information. This intermediary processing layer consolidates multiple detection functions into a single computational component, reducing physical device complexity while maintaining high measurement precision through sophisticated algorithms.
3Device complexity
If accessibility is determined without considering distance, then device complexity is reduced, but reliability deteriorates because communication ease varies with distance
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously measures the distance between the user and the detected person and uses this feedback to dynamically adjust accessibility determination. As the person approaches or moves away, the distance measurement provides real-time feedback that modifies the accessibility assessment, ensuring reliable determination that reflects actual communication conditions. This feedback mechanism improves reliability without requiring complex additional hardware.
Data Source
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AI summary
An accessibility determination device includes: an imaging device that captures images of a surrounding environment of a user at time intervals to acquire a plurality of captured images; a facial organ detector that analyzes the captured images to detect a facial organ of a person; a processor that specifies at least one of a face orientation, a moving direction, and a facial expression of the person based on a detection result of the facial organ detector, and determines, based on a specified result, accessibility; a target detector that detects whether or not the person is a predetermined target person based on a detection result of the facial organ detector; and a annunciator that makes a notification to the user when the accessibility determined by the processor satisfies a predetermined criterion and the target detector detects that the person is the predetermined target person. The processor changes the accessibility or the predetermined criterion depending on a distance between the imaging device and the person.