Multi-Sensor Mediator for Synchronized Webcam Input
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems face challenges in synchronizing and efficiently managing inputs from multiple image sensors, leading to costly hardware and complex software setups, with potential frame-to-frame desynchronization and bandwidth allocation issues, which can result in catastrophic errors in applications requiring synchronized video streams.
Innovation Solution
A multi-sensor mediator system that receives and combines signals from multiple image sensors into a composite signal, providing it to a sensor controller, ensuring synchronized and efficient delivery of data, thereby eliminating the need for separate webcam controller circuits and USB hubs, and allowing for coordinated processing and output.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If multiple separate webcam controller circuits are used, then each webcam can be controlled independently, but hardware cost increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple webcam controller circuits into a single shared controller that can manage multiple USB webcams simultaneously. This consolidation reduces the number of separate controller circuits needed, thereby reducing hardware cost while maintaining the ability to independently control each webcam through software configuration.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared controller is designed with universal functionality to handle multiple different USB webcam devices. It can dynamically allocate resources and manage data streams from multiple webcams, making a single controller capable of performing the functions previously requiring multiple separate controllers.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple separate USB devices are created, then each webcam can be individually managed, but software complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple USB device interfaces into a single unified USB device that can handle multiple webcam inputs. This reduces the number of separate device enumerations and driver instantiations required, thereby reducing software complexity and processing overhead while still allowing individual webcam management through a unified interface.
3Productivity
If separate controller circuits negotiate USB bandwidth independently, then each controller can optimize its own performance, but USB bandwidth efficiency decreases and frame synchronization cannot be guaranteed
Solution Approach 1:
The shared controller is designed with universal bandwidth management capabilities that allow it to allocate USB bandwidth dynamically among multiple webcam devices. This centralized allocation ensures efficient utilization of the USB bus while guaranteeing equal bandwidth distribution to maintain frame-to-frame synchronization across all connected webcams.
Solution Approach 2:
The controller implements a feedback mechanism that monitors the bandwidth usage and synchronization status of all connected webcams. Based on this feedback, it dynamically adjusts bandwidth allocation to maintain optimal performance and ensure frame synchronization, preventing any single webcam from monopolizing the bus bandwidth.
Data Source
AI summary
New systems and methods are hereby provided that inherently and naturally resolve the challenges of synthesizing coordinated inputs from multiple cameras. For example, a multi-sensor mediator may collect the input data from multiple sensors, and generate a composite signal that encodes the combined data from the different sensors. The multi-sensor mediator may then relay the composite signal to a sensor controller, as if the signal were coming from a single sensor. A computing device that receives the input from the sensor controller may then generate an output based on the composite signal, which may include processing the composite signal to combine the separate signals from the different sensors, such as to provide a stereo image output, for example. The multi-sensor mediator makes such an output possible by ensuring coordinated input and processing of the input from the multiple sensors, for example.