Patent Grant
11185465
The present invention is in the field of computer control systems, and more specifically the field of control systems for sexual stimulation devices.
In the field of sexual stimulation devices, there are examples of control systems that allow for synchronization of the device with videos of sexual activity. However, existing systems are extremely limited in their functionality. They contain only limited libraries of manually pre-programmed synchronized stimulation routines, cannot recognize video content on their own, cannot automatically create their own stimulation routines, and cannot customize the experience for the user using biometric data about the user.
What is needed is a system and method for automated generation of control signals for sexual stimulation devices from videos of sexual activity.
Accordingly, the inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, a system and method for automated generation of control signals for sexual stimulation devices from videos of sexual activity. The system and method use annotation data indicating comprising indications of movements in the video corresponding to sexual activity to generate control signals for compatible sexual stimulation devices. The annotation data may be generated manually or automatically. Device control signals may be generated directly from the annotation data and synchronized with a video, or may be processed through a series of machine learning algorithms to generate models of “typical” sexual activity represented in the videos, which models are then used to generate signals for the sexual stimulation device.
According to a preferred embodiment, a system for automated generation of control signals for sexual stimulation devices from videos of sexual activity is disclosed, comprising: a video analysis engine comprising a plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory of, and operating on at least one processor of, a computer system, wherein the plurality of programming instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the computer system to: input a video of sexual activity; identify a movement or sequence of movements in the video corresponding to the sexual activity shown in the video; generating one or more signals corresponding to the identified movement or sequence of movements; transmitting the one or more signals to a compatible stimulation device such that compatible device emulates the identified movement or sequence of movements.
According to another preferred embodiment, a method for automated generation of control signals for sexual stimulation devices from videos of sexual activity is disclosed, comprising the steps of: inputting a video of sexual activity; identifying a movement or sequence of movements in the video corresponding to the sexual activity shown in the video; generating one or more signals corresponding to the identified movement or sequence of movements to a device controller; and transmitting the one or more signals to a compatible stimulation device such that compatible device emulates the identified movement or sequence of movements.
According to another preferred embodiment, a method for generating device control models for sexual stimulation devices is disclosed, comprising the steps of: creating annotation data for a video of sexual activity, the annotation data comprising indications of movements in the video corresponding to sexual activity; processing the annotation data through one or more machine learning algorithms to identify a plurality of patterns of movement in the annotation data; processing the patterns of movement through one or more machine learning algorithms to identify a sequence of the patterns of movement; and generating control signals for the compatible stimulation device from the sequence.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the identification of the movement or sequence of movements in the video is performed by processing the video through one or more machine learning algorithms.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the transmission of the one or more signals from the device controller to the compatible stimulation device is performed in synchronization with the playback of the video.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, a model generator is used to: store the identification of the movement or sequence of movements as annotation data; process the annotation data through one or more machine learning algorithms to identify a plurality of patterns of movement in the annotation data; process the patterns of movement through one or more machine learning algorithms to identify a sequence of the patterns of movement; and generate control signals for the compatible stimulation device from the sequence.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, a biometric sensor receiver is used to: receive biometric data of a user from one or more biometric sensors; and adjust the one or more control signals based on the biometric data prior to transmission to the compatible stimulation device.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the annotation data comprises data from a plurality of videos of sexual activity.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the one or more machine learning algorithms used to identify a plurality of patterns of movement in the annotation data is a clustering algorithm.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, clustering algorithm is a K-means clustering algorithm.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the one or more machine learning algorithms used to identify a sequence of patterns of movement in the annotation data is a reinforcement learning algorithm.
According to an aspect of an embodiment, the one or more machine learning algorithms used to identify a sequence of patterns of movement in the annotation data is a deep learning algorithm.
The accompanying drawings illustrate several aspects and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention according to the aspects. It will be appreciated by one skilled in the art that the particular arrangements illustrated in the drawings are merely exemplary, and are not to be considered as limiting of the scope of the invention or the claims herein in any way.
The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, a system and method for automated generation of control signals for sexual stimulation devices from videos of sexual activity. The system and method use annotation data indicating comprising indications of movements in the video corresponding to sexual activity to generate control signals for compatible sexual stimulation devices. The annotation data may be generated manually or automatically. Device control signals may be generated directly from the annotation data and synchronized with a video, or may be processed through a series of machine learning algorithms to generate models of “typical” sexual activity represented in the videos, which models are then used to generate signals for the sexual stimulation device.
In the field of sexual stimulation devices, there are examples of control systems for such devices that allow for synchronization of the device with videos of sexual activity. These control systems attempt to replicate the sexual activities shown on the screen through synchronization of the video with some form of sexual stimulation device. However, existing systems cannot synchronize with any video of sexual activity. They must be manually pre-programmed for each video. As a result, they contain only limited libraries of video-synchronized stimulation routines. Further, since they are manually pre-programmed, the experience is the same for every user, and cannot be customized to the user's preferences or biometric data. As a result, such systems cannot accurately imitate the sensations shown in the video for many or most users, and cannot customize the experience for the user using biometric data about the user such as differences in anatomy. There are numerous improvements of this invention over the prior art, such as automated real time video analysis and synchronization, modeling of “typical” or “representative” sexual activity from one or more videos, and broad customization of the user experience based on user preferences and the user's biometric data.
This control system uses automated, real-time video analysis and machine learning algorithms to identify components of the sexual activity in the video such as movement, pressure, and rhythm, as opposed to existing systems which require manually pre-programming the controller to match the perceived activity in the videos. Using real-time video analysis allows access to the entirety of sexual video content available on the internet. Any video containing sexual content could be used with the system, which allows the user to choose videos with very specific content based on the user's preferences.
Since any video containing sexual content can be used, the system can be tuned to mimic the sexual activity of particular actors or actresses engaging in specific sexual activities. The machine learning algorithms used to conduct the video analysis could be fed metadata about the videos such as the names of the actor or actress, such that the control system could learn to “perform” certain sexual activities just like a certain actor or actress does generally, or even in a particular film. Likewise, since any video can be used with this control system, and since the synchronization with the videos can be either automated or controlled by the user, the opportunities for customization and sharing are unlimited. Users would have the opportunity to customize the stimulation associated with videos in myriad ways, and share those customized experiences with others by sharing the control system file associated with that video. Further, users could create videos of their own sexual activity, and “share” their experience with others remotely through this control system and an appropriate stimulation device.
Another major benefit of this control system is the broad customization allowed based on user profiles. At the most basic level, users can simply watch a video, and allow the system to control the device based on the system's automated video parsing without any adjustment or input. However, the system is not limited to such usage. The system could be used with a manual form of input such as a slider bar on the screen, which allows users to map their own perception of the movement and sexual activity in the video.
The system could allow users to set up a profile containing parameters and preferences for operation of the compatible sexual stimulation device. For example, the user could set a parameter indicating that the device should speed up or slow down when certain movements in the video are detected. Further, combining these parameters with biometric sensor data could allow the user to indicate that the device should attempt to prolong orgasm for a certain period of time. For example, the user could set a parameter indicating that orgasm should be delayed at least 15 minutes, and this parameter, combined with biometric data of breathing rate, heart rate, penile stiffness, etc., could cause the control system to slow down or stop stimulation until the biometric data falls back within certain ranges, at which point the device would continue stimulation as usual. A myriad of parameters, preferences, and biometric data ranges could be used. For example, the control system could be instructed to delay orgasm, prevent orgasm, or hold the user at a given level of excitement.
Further, metadata can be captured from the video related to the video content including, for example, the actor or actress in the video, the type of sexual activity, the position or orientation of the sexual activity, the location or scene in which the sexual activity occurs, and the style or category of the video content (e.g., oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, fetish). Using metadata associated with the videos, the control system could select or suggest videos containing very specific content based on the user's preferences. Such metadata may already be embedded in the videos, may be available on the internet, or may be developed by having users input such metadata in a growing library of such videos. Further, biometric data, for example penis length and girth for males, can be entered into the user profile, and the stimulation provided by the control system can be automatically adjusted to provide the user a customized, better feeling, more realistic experience based on those dimensions. For females, the amount of vaginal secretions could be measured using sensors on a compatible device, and the compatible device's operation could be adjusted accordingly. Optionally, other types of biometric data such as heart rate, breathing rate, and penile stiffness could be captured by a variety of commercially available devices (for example, sports training monitors), or by sensors on the stimulation device, itself, and fed back to the user profile to automatically optimize the video content and types of stimulation preferred by the user.
The process of training the machine learning algorithms used by the control system could be aided by a number of means. For example, users could manually tag a small subset of videos with synchronized stimulation routines, which could then be applied by the machine learning algorithms to very large databases of videos to learn which videos contain that sort of sexual activity. Clustering could be used to identify certain types of sexual activity, based on the movement and rhythm associated with them, and pressure can be extrapolated from smaller sets of manually tagged videos. User ratings in some portal or online platform could help refine the outputs and extrapolations generated by the machine learning algorithms.
In some embodiments, all components of the video control system may be located on a general purpose computer. In other embodiments, some components of the video control system may be located on the compatible stimulation device as embedded computer components or systems. For example, a compatible stimulation device may contain an embedded computer component or systems that act as the device controller, which receives signals from a video analysis engine and causes the compatible stimulation device to operate in accordance with those signals. In some aspects of some embodiments, such an embedded computer component or system might contain programmed sequences of movements or other content such that the bandwidth required to transmit signals to the device can be reduced by sending references to the programmed sequences of movements.
One or more different aspects may be described in the present application. Further, for one or more of the aspects described herein, numerous alternative arrangements may be described; it should be appreciated that these are presented for illustrative purposes only and are not limiting of the aspects contained herein or the claims presented herein in any way. One or more of the arrangements may be widely applicable to numerous aspects, as may be readily apparent from the disclosure. In general, arrangements are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice one or more of the aspects, and it should be appreciated that other arrangements may be utilized and that structural, logical, software, electrical and other changes may be made without departing from the scope of the particular aspects. Particular features of one or more of the aspects described herein may be described with reference to one or more particular aspects or figures that form a part of the present disclosure, and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specific arrangements of one or more of the aspects. It should be appreciated, however, that such features are not limited to usage in the one or more particular aspects or figures with reference to which they are described. The present disclosure is neither a literal description of all arrangements of one or more of the aspects nor a listing of features of one or more of the aspects that must be present in all arrangements.
Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the title of this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to be taken as limiting the disclosure in any way.
Devices that are in communication with each other need not be in continuous communication with each other, unless expressly specified otherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with each other may communicate directly or indirectly through one or more communication means or intermediaries, logical or physical.
A description of an aspect with several components in communication with each other does not imply that all such components are required. To the contrary, a variety of optional components may be described to illustrate a wide variety of possible aspects and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects. Similarly, although process steps, method steps, algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, such processes, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work in alternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In other words, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in this patent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirement that the steps be performed in that order. The steps of described processes may be performed in any order practical. Further, some steps may be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied as occurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described after the other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by its depiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process is exclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not imply that the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one or more of the aspects, and does not imply that the illustrated process is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once per aspect, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that they may only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carried out or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some aspects or some occurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a given aspect or occurrence.
When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readily apparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of a single device or article. Similarly, where more than one device or article is described herein, it will be readily apparent that a single device or article may be used in place of the more than one device or article.
The functionality or the features of a device may be alternatively embodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly described as having such functionality or features. Thus, other aspects need not include the device itself.
Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimes be described in singular form for clarity. However, it should be appreciated that particular aspects may include multiple iterations of a technique or multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless noted otherwise. Process descriptions or blocks in figures should be understood as representing modules, segments, or portions of code which include one or more executable instructions for implementing specific logical functions or steps in the process. Alternate implementations are included within the scope of various aspects in which, for example, functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved, as would be understood by those having ordinary skill in the art.
Conceptual Architecture
The annotations may be used directly to generate device control signals 1205, such as real-time use wherein the device control signals are generated 1205 immediately or very soon after the annotations are created, or delayed use by storing the annotations for later use 1202 and generating device control signals 1205 from the stored annotations. In this use, the annotations will typically be used to generate control signals for a particular video for which the annotations were made. A single such annotation may be used or some combination of annotations for the same video (e.g., averaging of multiple annotations).
Alternatively, the annotations may be processed through machine learning algorithms to create models of movement patterns and sequences commonly associated with certain videos, or certain sexual activities, persons, etc. In this use, annotations from a plurality of different videos will typically be used. The annotations are processed through a first set of machine learning algorithms to detect and analyze movement patterns typical of certain sexual activities 1203. This first set of machine learning algorithms may use techniques such as clustering to group together similar types of movement patterns. The movement pattern data are then processed through a second set of machine learning algorithms to determine sequencing information 1204 such as how long a pattern is typically held and the probabilities of changing to different patterns after the current pattern. The sequencing information is used to create predictive models of typical or expected sequences of movement patterns, which mimic frequently-seen depictions of sexual activity in the annotated data. The data from these models may then be used to generate device control signals 1205 representing movement patterns and sequences in common sexual activities.
In this exemplary embodiment, a clip parser 1401 parses (i.e., breaks breaks or segments) a video into smaller clips to reduce the scale of the video processing by the machine learning algorithms (i.e., reduces the video to more easily manageable smaller clips of a larger video). Depending on the size of the video, available processing power, and the machine learning algorithm to be used, the clip parser 1401 may reduce the video to any size ranging from the entire video to frame-by-frame clips of the video. Where a video is annotated with known activities (e.g., where the video or segments of the video have been annotated with an indication of the type of activity that is contained therein), the clip parser 1401 may parse the video into clips corresponding to the length of the known activity, as indicated by the annotations. In such cases, the clip parser 1401 forwards the clips of known activity directly to an action detector 1402. Where the video contains depictions of unknown activities, the clip parser will parse the video into uniform sizes (e.g., frame-by-frame, or a certain number of frames representing several seconds or minutes of video), and send the video to an action classifier 1403, which classifies the activities in the video before sending them an known activities to the action detector 1402.
The action classifier 1403 comprises one or more machine learning algorithms that have been trained to classify human actions. Classification of human action is a simpler activity than human action detection. Human action classification involves identification of human objects in the video and some classification of the activity being demonstrated by the human objects (e.g., standing, walking, running, jumping, etc.). Classification does not require a determination of when the action starts, where in the frame the action occurs, or the relative motion of the action; it simply requires that an object in the video be recognized as a person and that the activity of that person be identified.
The action detector 1402 received videos of known sexual activity (i.e., those that have already been classified either manually or using machine learning algorithms), and detects when the action starts, where in the frame the action occurs, or the relative motion of the action. Because the activity in the video is already known, machine learning algorithms may be employed which have been specially-trained for the type of activity depicted in the video. Action detection involves first segmenting the video into objects and backgrounds, identifying human objects in each frame of video, and tracking the movement of those human objects across video frames.
Both action classification and action detection rely on color-based processing of pixels in each frame of the video. Most videos currently available, whether or not depicting sexual activity, are two-dimensional (2D) videos containing color information only (e.g., the RGB color model), from which depth information must be inferred. The additional of depth sensors allows the addition of depth information to the video data (e.g., RGBD color/depth model), which improves human pose estimation but requires specialized sensors that must be used at the time of filming. Due to the processing-intensive nature of analyzing videos using machine learning algorithms, some simplification techniques may be used to reduce the computing power required and/or speed up the processing time. For example, facial recognition algorithms have become widely used, fairly accurate, and can be implemented on computing devices with modest processing power. Thus, for videos where fellatio is known to be the primary sexual activity, facial recognition algorithms may be used as the machine learning component to track the relative position and orientation of the face in the video to indicate the movement component of sexual activity. This greatly reduces the amount of computing power required relative to videos containing unknown sexual activity and/or where whole body human activity must be classified and detected. As there is a limited range of possible sexual activity, and certain sexual activities are more common than others, specially-trained machine learning algorithms can be employed for given types of sexual activity to improve action classification and action detection times and accuracy.
For both action classification and action detection, a variety of machine learning algorithms may be used. For example, as noted above, a convolutional neural network (CNN) may be applied to perform segmentation of each video frame. Other machine learning algorithms or combinations of machine learning algorithms may be employed. For example, a CNN may be employed to extract the features in the video, followed by a long short-term memory (LSTM) algorithm to evaluate the temporal relationships between features. In another example, a three-dimensional CNN (3D CNN) may be employed which can directly create hierarchical representations of spatial and temporal relationships, thus obviating the need to processing through an LSTM. In another example, a two-stream CNN may be used, wherein the first stream of input into the CNN is a set of temporal relationships that are established by a pre-determined set of features, and the second stream is frames from the video. Action classification and/or action detection can be performed by averaging the predictions of the CNN, or by using the output of the CNN for each frame of the video as input to a 3D CNN. Many other variations are possible, and while CNNs are particularly suitable for video processing, other types of machine learning algorithms may be employed.
The clip annotator 1404 associates each video clip with action detection data synchronized with the playback times (or frames) of the video clip, and the clip re-integrator 1405 combines the clips back into the original video received by the clip parser 1401. The annotated video, or just the annotations data from the video, may then be used to generate device control data or may be further processed to extract models of typical sexual activity prior to generating device control data.
Detailed Description of Exemplary Aspects
Convolutional neural networks are a type of artificial neural network commonly used to analyze imagery that use a mathematical operation called convolution (also called a dot product or cross-correlation) instead of general matrix multiplication as in other types of artificial neural networks. Convolutional neural networks are fully connected, meaning that each node in one layer is connected to every node in the next layer. Each layer of the CNN convolves the input from the previous layer. Each convolutional node processes data only for its receptive field, which is typically a small sub-area of the image (e.g., a 5×5 square of pixels). There may be pooling layers in a CNN which reduce the dimensionality of the data by combining the outputs of node clusters in one layer into a single node in the next layer. Each node in a CNN computes an output value by applying a specific function to the input values coming from the receptive field in the previous layer. The function that is applied to the input values is determined by a vector of weights and a bias. The CNN “learns” by making iterative adjustments to these biases and weights.
In this application of CNNs, an input image 1601 is processed through a CNN in which there are two stages, a convolution stage 1602 and a de-convolution stage 1603, ultimately resulting in an output image 1604 in which objects in the image are segmented (i.e., identified as separate from) the background of the image. In the convolution stage 1602, the image is processed through multiple convolution layers to extract features from the image, and then through a pooling layer to reduce the dimensionality of the data (i.e., aggregation of pixels) for the next round of convolutions. After several rounds of convolution and pooling, the features have been extracted and the data have been reduced to a manageable size. The data are then passed to the de-convolution stage 1603, in which a prediction is made as to whether each pixel or group of pixels represents an object, and passed through several layers of de-convolution before a new prediction is made at a larger level of de-aggregation of the pixels. This process repeats until an output image 1604 is obtained of a similar size as the input image 1601, wherein each pixel of the output image 1604 is labeled with an indication as to whether it represents an object or background.
To process annotation data to develop models, patterns of movement will ideally be extracted from a larger number of videos. When a machine learning algorithm is fed the annotation data from many such videos, these patterns can be identified across the various videos, and the frequency of these patterns across all videos can be extracted, as shown in the bar chart at 1720. In this bar chart 1720, one hundred total hours of video time was processed through the machine learning algorithm, and the number of hours each pattern of movement 1711-1715 was displayed is shown. For example, Pattern 4 was displayed in a total of 40 hours out of the 100 total hours of video. Machine learning algorithms suitable for this identification of patterns across videos are clustering-type algorithms such as K-means clustering (also known as Lloyd's algorithm), in which movement patterns in the annotation data are clustered into groups containing similar movement patterns. From the clusters, certain types of movement patterns can be identified. For example, in the case of a video depicting fellatio, clusters of movement will show shallow motions around the tip of the penis (e.g., Pattern 41714), deep motions around the base of the penis (e.g., Pattern 1), movements along the full length of the penis (e.g., Pattern 3), etc. Such clusters may be visually mapped in 2D or 3D to confirm the consistency and accuracy of the clustering.
Finally, other types of machine learning algorithms may be employed to create models of sexual activity shown in the processed annotation data. In one method, reinforcement learning may be employed to identify the frequency counts of certain patterns of movement, create “states” representing these patterns, and probabilities of transferring from any given state to any other state. An example of such a state diagram is shown at 1730, wherein each state represents one of the patterns of movement 1711-1715, and the lines and percentages indicate the probability of transitioning to a different state. In the diagram at 1730, Pattern 51715 is shown as the current state, and probabilities of all possible transitions to and from the current state are shown. In practice, this state diagram 1730 would be expanded to include the probabilities to and from each state to every other state, but this diagram is simplified to show only transitions to and from the current state. From these state transition probabilities, sequences of movement patterns 1711-1715 may be constructed representing models of the “typical” activities shown in the video. If annotation data are processed for selected types of videos (e.g., videos containing certain types of sexual activity, certain actors or actresses, or videos from a certain film studio or director, etc.), the models will be representative of that selected type of video. Alternatively, a wide variety of deep learning algorithms may be used for this process including, but not limited to, dense neural networks, convolutional neural networks, generative adversarial networks, and recurrent neural networks. Each of these types of machine learning algorithms may be employed to identify sequences of the patterns of movement identified in the clustering at the previous stage.
Hardware Architecture
Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented on hardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, they may be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate user process, in a library package bound into network applications, on a specially constructed machine, on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.
Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of the aspects disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmable network-resident machine (which should be understood to include intermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such network devices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured or designed to utilize different types of network communication protocols. A general architecture for some of these machines may be described herein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which a given unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specific aspects, at least some of the features or functionalities of the various aspects disclosed herein may be implemented on one or more general-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such as for example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a network server or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tablet computing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, or other appropriate computing device), a consumer electronic device, a music player, or any other suitable electronic device, router, switch, or other suitable device, or any combination thereof. In at least some aspects, at least some of the features or functionalities of the various aspects disclosed herein may be implemented in one or more virtualized computing environments (e.g., network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted on one or more physical computing machines, or other appropriate virtual environments).
Referring now to
In one aspect, computing device 10 includes one or more central processing units (CPU) 12, one or more interfaces 15, and one or more busses 14 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). When acting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 12 may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated with the functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine. For example, in at least one aspect, a computing device 10 may be configured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 12, local memory 11 and/or remote memory 16, and interface(s) 15. In at least one aspect, CPU 12 may be caused to perform one or more of the different types of functions and/or operations under the control of software modules or components, which for example, may include an operating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, and the like.
CPU 12 may include one or more processors 13 such as, for example, a processor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families of microprocessors. In some aspects, processors 13 may include specially designed hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, for controlling operations of computing device 10. In a particular aspect, a local memory 11 (such as non-volatile random access memory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one or more levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 12. However, there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system 10. Memory 11 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, for example, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and the like. It should be further appreciated that CPU 12 may be one of a variety of system-on-a-chip (SOC) type hardware that may include additional hardware such as memory or graphics processing chips, such as a QUALCOMM SNAPDRAGON™ or SAMSUNG EXYNOS™ CPU as are becoming increasingly common in the art, such as for use in mobile devices or integrated devices.
As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to those integrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobile processor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller, a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, an application-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmable circuit.
In one aspect, interfaces 15 are provided as network interface cards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of data packets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 15 may for example support other peripherals used with computing device 10. Among the interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relay interfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces, graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types of interfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus (USB), Serial, Ethernet, FIREWIRE™, THUNDERBOLT™, PCI, parallel, radio frequency (RF), BLUETOOTH™, near-field communications (e.g., using near-field magnetics), 802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fast Ethernet interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Serial ATA (SATA) or external SATA (ESATA) interfaces, high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), digital visual interface (DVI), analog or digital audio interfaces, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces, high-speed serial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Point of Sale (POS) interfaces, fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), and the like. Generally, such interfaces 15 may include physical ports appropriate for communication with appropriate media. In some cases, they may also include an independent processor (such as a dedicated audio or video processor, as is common in the art for high-fidelity A/V hardware interfaces) and, in some instances, volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).
Although the system shown in
Regardless of network device configuration, the system of an aspect may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as, for example, remote memory block 16 and local memory 11) configured to store data, program instructions for the general-purpose network operations, or other information relating to the functionality of the aspects described herein (or any combinations of the above). Program instructions may control execution of or comprise an operating system and/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 16 or memories 11, 16 may also be configured to store data structures, configuration data, encryption data, historical system operations information, or any other specific or generic non-program information described herein.
Because such information and program instructions may be employed to implement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least some network device aspects may include nontransitory machine-readable storage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed to store program instructions, state information, and the like for performing various operations described herein. Examples of such nontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are not limited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical media such as optical disks, and hardware devices that are specially configured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-only memory devices (ROM), flash memory (as is common in mobile devices and integrated systems), solid state drives (SSD) and “hybrid SSD” storage drives that may combine physical components of solid state and hard disk drives in a single hardware device (as are becoming increasingly common in the art with regard to personal computers), memristor memory, random access memory (RAM), and the like. It should be appreciated that such storage means may be integral and non-removable (such as RAM hardware modules that may be soldered onto a motherboard or otherwise integrated into an electronic device), or they may be removable such as swappable flash memory modules (such as “thumb drives” or other removable media designed for rapidly exchanging physical storage devices), “hot-swappable” hard disk drives or solid state drives, removable optical storage discs, or other such removable media, and that such integral and removable storage media may be utilized interchangeably. Examples of program instructions include both object code, such as may be produced by a compiler, machine code, such as may be produced by an assembler or a linker, byte code, such as may be generated by for example a JAVA™ compiler and may be executed using a Java virtual machine or equivalent, or files containing higher level code that may be executed by the computer using an interpreter (for example, scripts written in Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).
In some aspects, systems may be implemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to
In some aspects, systems may be implemented on a distributed computing network, such as one having any number of clients and/or servers. Referring now to
In addition, in some aspects, servers 32 may call external services 37 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer to additional data concerning a particular call. Communications with external services 37 may take place, for example, via one or more networks 31. In various aspects, external services 37 may comprise web-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on the hardware device itself. For example, in one aspect where client applications 24 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronic device, client applications 24 may obtain information stored in a server system 32 in the cloud or on an external service 37 deployed on one or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises. In addition to local storage on servers 32, remote storage 38 may be accessible through the network(s) 31.
In some aspects, clients 33 or servers 32 (or both) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliances that may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks 31. For example, one or more databases 34 in either local or remote storage 38 may be used or referred to by one or more aspects. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill in the art that databases in storage 34 may be arranged in a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of data access and manipulation means. For example, in various aspects one or more databases in storage 34 may comprise a relational database system using a structured query language (SQL), while others may comprise an alternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the art as “NoSQL” (for example, HADOOP CASSANDRA™, GOOGLE BIGTABLE™, and so forth). In some aspects, variant database architectures such as column-oriented databases, in-memory databases, clustered databases, distributed databases, or even flat file data repositories may be used according to the aspect. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art that any combination of known or future database technologies may be used as appropriate, unless a specific database technology or a specific arrangement of components is specified for a particular aspect described herein. Moreover, it should be appreciated that the term “database” as used herein may refer to a physical database machine, a cluster of machines acting as a single database system, or a logical database within an overall database management system. Unless a specific meaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, it should be construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all of which are understood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by those having ordinary skill in the art.
Similarly, some aspects may make use of one or more security systems 36 and configuration systems 35. Security and configuration management are common information technology (IT) and web functions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any IT or web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill in the art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the art now or in the future may be used in conjunction with aspects without limitation, unless a specific security 36 or configuration system 35 or approach is specifically required by the description of any specific aspect.
In various aspects, functionality for implementing systems or methods of various aspects may be distributed among any number of client and/or server components. For example, various software modules may be implemented for performing various functions in connection with the system of any particular aspect, and such modules may be variously implemented to run on server and/or client components.
The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications of the various aspects described above. Accordingly, the present invention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 16214030 | Dec 2018 | US |
| Child | 16861014 | US | |
| Parent | 16139550 | Sep 2018 | US |
| Child | 16214030 | US |
