Patent Application
20170352130
The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to display resolution control, and more particularly, to a display apparatus referring to human activity to dynamically adjust a display resolution and a related control method thereof.
In order to improve a user's viewing experience, manufacturers devote efforts to increasing a pixel density of a display (measured in pixels per inch (PPI)) of an electronic apparatus such as a battery-powered device (e.g. a mobile phone or a tablet computer). For example, a 5.5-inch mobile display with a 4K ultra-high definition (UHD) (3840λ2160) has a display density of up to 806 PPI. However, power consumption of an electronic apparatus increases due to an increase in display density, resulting in shortened battery life. The user has to charge the electronic apparatus frequently.
Thus, there is a need for a novel display mechanism to not only provide an enjoyable user's viewing experience but also maintain long battery life.
In accordance with exemplary embodiments of the present invention, a display apparatus referring to human activity to dynamically adjust a display resolution, and a related control method thereof are proposed to solve the above-mentioned problems.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, an exemplary display apparatus is disclosed. The exemplary display apparatus comprises a detector and a controller. The detector is arranged for detecting motion of the display apparatus to identify an activity of a user of the display apparatus, and accordingly generating an identification result. The controller is coupled to the detector, and is arranged for determining a display resolution of the display apparatus according to the identification result.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, an exemplary control method of a display apparatus is disclosed. The exemplary control method comprises the following steps: detecting motion of the display apparatus to identify an activity of a user of the display apparatus, and accordingly generating an identification result; and determining a display resolution of the display apparatus according to the identification result.
By dynamically adjusting a display resolution according to different user activities or usage scenarios, the proposed display mechanism may not only reduce power consumption but also maintain good user's viewing experience.
These and other objectives of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment that is illustrated in the various figures and drawings.
Certain terms are used throughout the description and following claims to refer to particular components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, manufacturers may refer to a component by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name but not function. In the following description and in the claims, the terms “include” and “comprise” are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted to mean “include, but not limited to . . . ”. Also, the term “coupled” is intended to mean either an indirect or direct electrical connection. Accordingly, if one device is electrically connected to another device, that connection may be through a direct electrical connection, or through an indirect electrical connection via other devices and connections.
The proposed display mechanism may dynamically adjust a display resolution according to different user activities or usage scenarios (e.g. resting, walking and running) while maintaining a good user's viewing experience, thereby reducing power consumption of a display apparatus. By way of example but not limitation, when a user is walking and watching a video played on a portable electronic apparatus (e.g. a display apparatus) held by the user, the eye's perception of display resolution is reduced as compared to when the user is sitting on a chair and watching the video. Hence, when the user is walking and watching the video played on the display apparatus held by the user, the proposed display apparatus may dynamically decrease a display resolution of the display apparatus in response to an activity of the user (i.e. walking) to thereby reduce power consumption, wherein the user may still have an enjoyable viewing experience. Additionally, the proposed display mechanism may detect motion of a display apparatus to identify an activity of a user of the display apparatus, and accordingly dynamically adjust a display resolution of the display apparatus to reduce power consumption. Further description is provided below.
Please refer to
Step 100: Start.
Step 110: Detect motion of the display apparatus to identify an activity of a user of the display apparatus, and accordingly generate an identification result.
Step 120: Determine a display resolution of the display apparatus according to the identification result.
In step 110, the activity of the user may be identified according to the detected motion of the display apparatus, including position information, translation information and/or rotation information, wherein a type of the activity of the user may be, by way of example but not limitation, resting (e.g. a still or almost still state), walking, running, cycling or commuting (e.g. standing or sitting in a public transport vehicle).
In step 120, the display resolution may meet the human eye's ability to perceive resolution under a condition where the user performs the activity. By way of example but not limitation, when the identification result indicates that the activity of the user is a first type user activity (e.g. a sedentary activity or a low-motion activity), the display resolution may be set to a first resolution; when the identification result indicates that the activity of the user is a second type user activity different from the first type user activity (e.g. an energetic activity or a high-motion activity), the display resolution may be set to a second resolution different from the first resolution.
The display screen 240 is coupled to the image processing circuit 230, and is arranged for displaying the image output IMOUT. When the identification result DR indicates that the activity of the user is a first type user activity, the image processing circuit 230 may generate the image output IMOUT according to a first resolution, and the display screen 240 may display the image output IMOUT at the first resolution; when the identification result DR indicates that the activity of the user is a second type user activity different from the first type user activity, the image processing circuit 230 may generate the image output IMOUT according to a second resolution different from the first resolution, and the display screen 240 may display the image output IMOUT at the second resolution.
In one implementation, the detector 210 may utilize at least one acceleration sensor to detect the motion of the display apparatus 200 to identify the activity of the user. Please refer to
By way of example but not limitation, the acceleration sensor 312 may be implemented by a linear acceleration sensor (e.g. an accelerometer (G-sensor)), and/or the acceleration sensor 314 may be implemented by an angular acceleration sensor (e.g. an orientation sensor (O-sensor) or a gyroscope sensor (gyro-sensor)). Hence, the detector 210 may detect linear motion information and/or angular motion information of the display apparatus 200, and the activity determiner 316 may identify the activity of the user according to the detected linear motion information and/or angular motion information. As a person skilled in the art should understand the operation of the activity determiner 316 which identifies the activity of the user according to the sensor result(s) of the acceleration sensor(s), further description is omitted here for brevity.
It should be noted that the structure of the detector shown in
Further, after the detector 210 identifies the activity of the user to generate the identification result DR, the controller 220 may refer to the identification result DR to control the image processing circuit 230 to adjust the display resolution. Please refer to
For illustrative purposes, the proposed display mechanism (or a dynamic resolution scaling mechanism) is described with reference to the image processing circuit 430 employing Android graphics architecture. However, this is not meant to be a limitation of the present invention. It is possible to utilize other graphics architecture to perform dynamic resolution scaling. In this embodiment, the image processing circuit 430 may include, but is not limited to, an application layer 431, a dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) upper layer 432, an OpenGL ES/EGL 433, a buffer queue 434, a surface flinger 435, a DRS lower layer 436, a hardware composer 437 and a frame buffer 438. The application layer 431 may call an application programming interface (API) of the OpenGL ES/EGL 433 to use a graphic processing unit (GPU) (not shown in
In one embodiment, after determining the display resolution of the display apparatus 200 according to the identification result DR, the controller 220 may generate the control signal CS to control the DRS upper layer 432 to intercept function calls of the OpenGL ES/EGL 433, ensuring that graphics rendering is performed with a proper display resolution. Additionally, before the hardware composer 437 composite all the visible layers together, the DRS lower layer 436 may intercept function calls passed to the hardware composer 437, ensuring that the composition is done with a proper display resolution. For example, the DRS upper layer 432 may refer to the control signal CS to perform resolution downscaling, and the DRS lower layer 436 may refer to the control signal CS to perform resolution upscaling. As a person skilled in the art should understand the operation of each element within the image processing circuit 430, further description is omitted here for brevity.
Based on the aforementioned resolution downscaling and resolution upscaling, the display apparatus 400 may dynamically adjust the display resolution of the display screen 240. Please refer to
In the embodiment shown in
Please note that the display resolution values shown in
In addition to dynamically adjusting a display resolution in response to a user activity (or a type of user activity), the proposed display mechanism may further selectively activate dynamical resolution scaling according to a usage scenario. In one embodiment, the proposed display mechanism may not activate the dynamical resolution scaling in a still image output mode. Please refer to
In another embodiment, the proposed display mechanism may not activate the dynamical resolution scaling in an external output mode. Please refer to
In yet another embodiment, the proposed display mechanism may not activate the dynamical resolution scaling in a head mounted display mode. Please refer to
In still another embodiment, the user may input a selection signal through the configuration UI 402 to determine whether to activate the dynamical resolution scaling.
The display mechanism described above may be summarized in
Step 100: Start.
Step 702: Determine whether to active dynamic resolution scaling. If yes, go to step 110; otherwise, return to step 110. For example, the controller 220 may determine whether the image output IMOUT of the display apparatus 200 is a dynamic image signal or a still image signal. In another example, the controller 220 may determine if the display apparatus 200 output the image output IMOUT to an external display screen (e.g. the display screen 640 shown in
Step 110: Detect motion of the display apparatus to identify an activity of a user of the display apparatus, and accordingly generate an identification result.
Step 720: Determine the activity of the user according to the identification result. If a type of the activity of the user is resting (e.g. the user is in a still state or resting in a chair), go to step 722; if the type of the activity of the user is commuting (e.g. the user is sitting on a seat in a public transport vehicle), go to step 724; if the type of the activity of the user is walking, go to step 726; if the type of the activity of the user is running, go to step 728.
Step 722: Display content (i.e. the image output IMOUT) on the display screen 240 at a first resolution.
Step 724: Display content on the display screen 240 at a second resolution.
Step 726: Display content on the display screen 240 at a third resolution.
Step 728: Display content on the display screen 240 at a fourth resolution.
In one embodiment, step 120 shown in
To sum up, by dynamically adjusting a display resolution according to different user activities or usage scenarios, the proposed display mechanism may not only reduce power consumption but also maintain good user's viewing experience.
Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.
