Surveillance Apparatus Environmental Change Compensation

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Solution Overview

Problem

Surveillance apparatuses face challenges in maintaining effective image and sound capture when the surrounding environment changes due to external device operations, leading to unintended influences such as luminance or sound volume changes.

Innovation Solution

The surveillance apparatus includes a communication unit to transmit commands to external devices, a detection unit to monitor environmental changes, and a control unit that adjusts settings to minimize the impact of these changes, such as switching from manual to automatic exposure settings or sound volume adjustments.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If the surveillance apparatus controls an external device to perform an action, then the external device operates as intended, but the surrounding environment changes due to luminance or sound volume changes, causing unintended influence on the surveillance apparatus

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontrol capabilityVSAvoidenvironmental change influence

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The surveillance apparatus performs preliminary detection of environmental changes before they significantly affect surveillance functionality. The detection unit monitors luminance and sound volume changes in advance, allowing the control unit to proactively adjust settings or compensate for changes before they degrade surveillance performance

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements a feedback mechanism where the detection unit continuously monitors environmental parameters (luminance, sound volume) and feeds this information back to the control unit. The control unit then adjusts surveillance settings based on this feedback to maintain optimal performance despite environmental changes caused by external device operations

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

2Reliability

If the surveillance apparatus monitors environmental changes to prevent unintended influence, then surveillance stability improves, but device complexity increases due to additional detection and control mechanisms

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesurveillance stabilityVSAvoidsystem structure

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The surveillance apparatus integrates multiple functions into unified components. The detection unit serves both as an environmental monitor and as part of the overall surveillance system, while the control unit performs both external device control and surveillance parameter adjustment, reducing the need for separate dedicated components for each function

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Data Source

PatentUS11283997B2Surveillance apparatus, method for controlling the same, and storage medium

Publication Date: 2022.03.22 CANON KK

AI summary

A surveillance apparatus includes a communication unit configured to transmit a command to an external device, a detection unit configured to detect a change in a surrounding environment in a case where the change is caused by an operation of the external device or a peripheral device controlled by the external device operating in response to the command and a control unit configured to change, in a case where there is a function to be affected by the change detected by the detection unit, a setting of the function to a setting with which the function is not affected.