Parent Avatar Tracking Sphere for Child Safety in Immersive Environments
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods are insufficient for parents to control and ensure the safety of children in online immersive environments, as these environments are vast and constantly changing, making it difficult to automatically or manually censor inappropriate content, leaving children exposed to unsuitable interactions and experiences.
Innovation Solution
A method where a parent's avatar defines a tracking sphere in the online immersive environment, marking safe zones and authorizing access for their child's avatar, with the ability to dynamically adjust the sphere's size and shape based on the environment, and notify the parent of permanent changes, allowing for real-time control and protection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional methods are used to control children's exposure in online immersive environments, then the control mechanism is simple, but the safety protection is insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a tracking sphere as an intermediary mechanism between the parent avatar and the child avatar. This tracking sphere acts as a mediator that automatically defines safe zones and controls access without requiring direct manual intervention, thereby improving safety protection while maintaining relatively simple control through automated spatial reasoning
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service safety control by automatically tracking the parent avatar's path and using it to define safe zones for the child avatar. The system serves itself by autonomously determining appropriate content boundaries based on the parent's exploration history, eliminating the need for complex manual censorship mechanisms
2Measurement precision
If manual censorship is used to control content accessibility, then the control precision is high, but the operational burden is high
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service by automatically tracking the parent avatar's movement path and using this information to dynamically define safe zones. This automated approach maintains high control precision through accurate spatial tracking while completely eliminating the operational burden of manual content censorship
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors the parent avatar's position and updates the tracking sphere accordingly, creating a feedback loop that automatically adapts the safe zones in real-time. This feedback mechanism maintains precise control without requiring manual intervention, as the system responds automatically to the parent's exploration actions
3Area of stationary object
If the tracking sphere is made larger to cover more areas, then the safe zone coverage is improved, but the control specificity is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The tracking sphere is made dynamic rather than static, automatically adjusting its size and shape based on the parent avatar's movement path and the specific environment being explored. This dynamic adaptation allows the system to achieve both wide coverage when needed and specific control when the parent visits particular areas, resolving the contradiction between coverage and specificity
Data Source
AI summary
In some example embodiments, a method includes defining a tracking area for a first avatar in an online immersive environment, wherein the tracking area encompasses the first avatar and some defined area beyond the first avatar. The first avatar represents a first person who is a guardian of a second person in the real world and external to the online immersive environment. A second avatar represents the second person in the online immersive environment. The method includes tracking a path through the online immersive environment of the tracking area for the first avatar. The method includes marking a region in the online immersive environment as a safe zone for the second avatar, after the path of the tracking area for the first avatar has traversed the region. The method includes authorizing access to the region marked as the safe zone for the second avatar in the online immersive environment.