Digital Commons Network^™

Kitchen Assistance Robot And Robot-Assisted Kitchen Environment (P-62476/Ep), Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

A kitchen assistance robot (31) operates in a kitchen environment and relieves a person working in the kitchen of kitchen work. The kitchen assistance robot (31) comprises a robot body (33) and at least one robot arm (35) having a gripper device (37) or a hand device at one of its ends. The kitchen assistance robot (31) is adapted to operate a kitchen appliance (11, 19, 25) and/or a kitchen equipment (15), and/or the gripper device (37) or hand device includes or is adapted to grasp a tool (41) for performing kitchen work. The kitchen assistance robot (31) comprises a …

Determining Product Complementarity By Analyzing Search Query Streams, Luis Benavides, Timothy Shur, Anshul Sawant, Sreenivas Gollapudi, Nishith Parikh, Akshay Gupta, Leon Xu

Defensive Publications Series

Determining complementarity between products when viewing products online, e.g., via a shopping website or a search engine, is not straightforward. The information required to determine product complementarity is unstructured and/or spread across multiple sources. While co-purchase data can be used to infer complementarity, this requires large volumes of purchase data that is often unavailable. This disclosure describes techniques to identify relationships between products based on analysis of web search queries, subsequent clicks or other user actions, obtained with user permission. The techniques rely on the observation that query streams often include searches for related products, e.g., in the form of …

Optimizing Data Throughput Performance In 5g Non-Standalone Networks Using Deep Learning, Gordon Kuo

Defensive Publications Series

A user equipment (UE) in a non-standalone (NSA) 5G network uses a deep learning model to predict whether a better downlink (DL) throughput can be obtained by enabling 5G new radio (NR) capability to optimize its DL data throughput performance. 4G/5G measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) are recorded by the UE as training features during daily usage. The UE also records the perceived DL throughput for both the LTE-only mode and the 5G NR dual connectivity mode as labels. The deep learning model is trained based on the recorded features and labels using, for example, supervised learning. The UE implements …

Real-Time Secure Sharing Of Live Meeting Content Through Voice Commands Or User Clicks, Rajarshee Dhar, Deepesh Arora, Ram Mohan R

Defensive Publications Series

With the dramatic increase in working from home due to the COVID-19 situation, the reliance on online collaborative sessions has increased manifold and there is a significant need to have an enhanced immersive sharing and collaborative experience in live meetings. Existing sharing and collaboration mechanisms (including the sharing of meeting presentations ahead of time, etc.) all suffer from different weaknesses. To address these types of challenges, techniques are presented herein that support a means whereby, among other things, an authorized participant in an online meeting may request (through, for example, clicking on a shared meeting screen, using a voice input, …

Techniques To Facilitate Selection Of Next Hop Nrf In A Hierarchical Network Repository Function (Nrf) Deployment In 5g Networks, Ravi Shekhar, Satyabrata Seth, Shantanu Bhate, Ameo Ghosh

Defensive Publications Series

When a Fifth Generation (5G) Network Repository Function (NRF) deployed in a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) hierarchical model architecture receives a Network Function (NF) Discovery or Subscription or Access Token request, the NRF may not have the required information to serve the request on account of the information being divided among multiple NRF instances in the network. In such cases, the NRF instance that receives the request from a consumer NF may choose to forward or redirect the request to another NRF instance in the hierarchy. The conditions and policies to decide when to redirect or forward the request …

Api For Apps To Indicate The User Can Be Actively Interrupted, Alex Faaborg, Munaf Assaf

Defensive Publications Series

An operating system on a computing device may include an application programming interface (API) having one or more functions that can be used by software applications executing at the computing device to control the outputting of notifications, alerts, alarms, warnings, reminders, and the like, by the computing device while the software application is being used by a user. A software application may call or invoke one or more functions of the API to indicate whether notifications can be outputted by the computing device, such as whether the computing device may display a notification banner at a display device. For example, …

Withholding Content And Recommendation Delivery To Avoid Spoilers, Alexander James Faaborg, Brett Barros

Defensive Publications Series

Online news portals, personalized feeds, etc. can include content spoilers that can ruin a user’s online experience by revealing details of the plot of content such as television shows, movies, etc. This disclosure describes techniques to avoid spoilers by delaying the presentation of material pertaining to various types of content until a user has consumed the content. With user permission, a user’s content consumption history is accessed and utilized to identify news articles and other media that can be a content spoiler. Analysis of articles and other media can be performed using machine learning models or other suitable techniques to …

Power Swirl Burner - P-61897/Wo (=Id-03922), Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

A burner is disclosed having a base and a defined central opening. An inner wall stands on the base and defines an inner air gas channel with an outer perimeter of the burner. The inner wall includes a number of inner ports for directing gas from the inner air gas channel into the central opening. A central portion is included within the central opening, the central porting being smaller than the central opening. A central wall is arranged on the central portion and defines a central air gas channel and includes a number of central ports for directing gas from …

Global Contact Enhancements For Collaboration Tools, Mervyn Mcmurray

Defensive Publications Series

Typically, a collaboration tool, such as a video teleconferencing/messaging tool, facilitates intra-company communications through directory services that can be provided for the tool. As different companies can be included within the overall ecosystem of collaboration tool, inter-company communications may be desirable. However, the current contact paradigm for sharing contacts within a company may be insufficient when multiple users having a same name or identity may exist across multiple different companies. Presented herein is a technique to address such challenges by enhancing contact information to include additional identifiers that can be used to distinguish users among different companies.

Dynamic Content Insertion Within An App Content Stream Via Context Aggregation, Yan Mayster, Robert Bruce Bahnsen, Brian Shucker

Defensive Publications Series

Apps that stream content often interleave the personalized content broadcast with other information, such as advertisements, announcements, etc. Personalized and contextually optimal selection of such additional content is currently constrained by the information available to the specific app provider. This disclosure describes a context aggregator service that app makers can query to enhance the selection of inserted content by querying a broad variety of relevant contextual information, obtained with user permission. The context aggregator service can utilize individual and/or aggregated information to provide query responses, e.g., topics or advertisements that a user is likely to be interested in. If the …

Contextually-Relevant Vehicle Advertising, Robert Bruce Bahnsen, Yan Mayster

Defensive Publications Series

Existing approaches to adapt advertising messages on vehicle-mounted displays based on location rely on static demographic information about the area. Such approaches do not take into account changes in relevant contextual factors connected to the current location of the vehicle at a given time. This disclosure describes techniques to automatically select and display contextually relevant messages, such as advertisements, on vehicles. The messages are dynamically updated based on relevant changes in the vehicle’s context, such as location, time of day, day of the week, people in the vicinity, local events, current advertising needs of businesses, etc. If the route of …

Triggering Applications From A Distance Using Patterns Displayed On A Wearable Device, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Currently, voice interaction between users and smart devices does not use spatial context, e.g., the position of the user relative to the smart device, in responding to user queries which limits the possibilities of interaction and the precision of the answers provided by the smart device. This disclosure describes techniques that enable a user to trigger an application on a smart device such as a smart display or smart speaker by flashing a predefined pattern on a wearable device such as a smartwatch worn by the user. The predefined pattern is detected and utilized to determine the distance to the …

Limiting Spoken Navigation Guidance For Familiar Routes, Matthew Sharifi

Defensive Publications Series

People typically follow the same route for often-repeated trips, such as commuting to work. In such cases, the need for navigation guidance arises only if the usually-followed route needs any deviations. This disclosure describes a quiet navigation mode for a digital map/navigation application, implemented with user permission. In the quiet navigation mode, spoken navigation guidance is limited to those steps along the route that correspond to deviations from the user’s routinely traversed route between the given origin and destination. By reducing spoken notifications and alerting the user only when necessary, the quiet navigation mode can improve the user experience of …

Routing Of Network Traffic On A Per-Application Basis, James Mattis, Ryan Weekes, Tomasz Wasilczyk, Guru Nagarajan, Sanjay Lal, Kevin Meier, Jean Chalard, Chris Weir

Defensive Publications Series

Wireless applications in certain domains, e.g., automotive, Internet-of-Things (IoT), etc., consume substantial amounts of bandwidth. A user accustomed to data consumption on a mobile device may be surprised to find the substantially larger amounts of data consumed via telemetry by wireless devices and sensors on their automobile. Reciprocally, a car manufacturer may not want a customer to pay for telemetry. This disclosure describes techniques to route network traffic to specific network interfaces on a per-application basis. The techniques can be implemented in a device operating system, and provide mechanisms for users and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to separate data costs …

T-Sensor Based Assisted Cooking On A Gas Hob-Id-04730, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention proposes the use of T-sensor (temperature sensor) with a gas hob to give protection against unmonitored/uncontrolled heating. The T-sensor functions to sense dry heating, rice cooking, water boiling condition, deep frying, simmer control or a controlled flame generation and remote status monitoring.

Test Coverage Analysis By Diffing Production Logs Against Integration Test Logs, Yifan Gao, Ben Rafferty, Tylor Sampson, Joseph Kubik

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes tools and techniques to analyze input and configuration coverage of software by performing large scale analysis of production and integration test data in a privacy-compliant manner. Test coverage analysis is made possible for highly complex input schema or for input schema that evolve with time. The techniques uncover the input-subspace that has been thus far integration-tested and the input-subspace that remains untested (known as test-gaps). When gathering data on how a specific software input/configuration is used in production, the techniques determine not only if they are used, but also how often they are used. Such data can …

Hidden And Tool-Free Installation Of An Appliance In The Furniture_Id-05037, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention proposes an installation for fixing an appliance in furniture, wherein a fastening element, e.g., a clip, which allows a tool-free installation/mounting of the appliance and the furniture. The installation solution provides no visible mark/cavity on the furniture. The invention uses prefixed clips on walls of the appliance, which allows their easy installation with home furniture.

Intelligent Mechanism For Robocall Prevention Using Artificial Intelligence-Driven Interactive Question And Answer Techniques, Anupam Mukherjee, Faisal Siyavudeen, Sanjay Sinha

Defensive Publications Series

A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized auto-dialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. Criminals and dishonest robocallers often alter or spoof the calling number of their outbound telephone calls in order to deceive a called party. This deception increases the chance that the called party will answer a robocall. In other cases, the spam calls may be more malicious. This proposal provides an artificial intelligence (AI)-based interactive and intelligent …

Converging Multiple Print Queues To Single Universal Print Queue, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

Managing and maintaining a multitude of print queues is a costly affair for any IT department in an

enterprise environment. This not only costs money but also time and human efforts. The cost is not confined to the

enterprise but also to the developer of the printer and related software products. This paper attempts to provide a

solution to eliminate or reduce the print queue clutter on customer’s personal computers and thus reduce cost, time and

stress of managing & maintaining the printing systems and software.

Techniques To Improve The Hit Rate Of Unicast Node-To-Node (N2n) Delivery In Channel-Hopping And Multi-Hop Low-Power And Lossy Networks (Llns), Lele Zhang, Chuanwei Li, Huimin She, Yajun Xia

Defensive Publications Series

In a large scale wireless mesh network, such as a Wireless Smart Utility Network (Wi-SUN), there can be many losses. For example, a transmitter typically does not know the availability of a receiver when transmitting, which can create losses. In another example, link quality measurements, such as expected transmission count (ETX), may not be well represented for every channel. In one instance, this proposal provides an improved scheduling technique that leverages Broadcast Interval (BI) information to determine receive (RX) and transmit (TX) plans for child nodes. Child nodes can select an appropriate parent node according to received schedules, which can …

Inline-Frames To Enable Zero-Friction Cross-Origin Transactions, Kentaro Hara

Defensive Publications Series

While web-users can currently exchange virtual coins, fun tokens, loyalty points, etc., such exchanges are limited to same-origin tokens. For example, points of a game application are exchangeable only within that application. This disclosure describes techniques that utilize inline-frames to enable token exchange in a manner that is both cross-origin and zero-friction. The techniques enable users to securely and confidentially send cross-origin tokens in a single-step process as easy as clicking a like-button, without additional login or confirmation. The techniques enable websites and services to easily micro-monetize (or fun-tokenize) digital content and user activities on the web, thereby inducing a …

Optimizing Notifications In A Collaboration Application, Brian Powell, Robert Barton, Jerome Henry, Cesar Obediente

Defensive Publications Series

Collaboration tools typically utilize many manual settings or 'knobs', but often lack an ability to learn what features, settings, etc. may be important to a user, in general. Optimization of individual collaboration tools has been studied; however, such studies are typically focused on making an individual tool more efficient. In contrast, this proposal provides techniques for optimizing collaboration tool notifications based on user habits, real-time context, and behavior in a manner that is not 'just' based on the way in which a user utilizes a particular collaboration tool.

Predicting Consumer's Behaviour_Id-05303, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention relates to a kitchen system, particularly to an oven system, providing operation choices based on the prediction of consumer behavior. The oven system comprises an application based on algorithms to detect patterns. The term “Pattern” in this invention means a pattern indicating repeating settings of a product in order to perform the expected task. On the other hand, it is similar that when people do things, we perform them in an individual sequence, and such a sequence runs frequently.

The application based on the algorithms collects and analyzes behavior over a certain time frame about repeating usage and …

Hidden And Tool-Free Installation Of An Appliance In The Furniture_Id-05343, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention proposes an installation for fixing an appliance in furniture, wherein a fastening element, e.g., a clip, which allows a tool-free installation/mounting of the appliance and the furniture. The installation solution provides no visible mark/cavity on the furniture. The invention uses prefixed clips on walls of the appliance, which allows their easy installation with home furniture.

Presentation Mode Oven Function_Id-05289, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention relates to an application included in a kitchen system, particularly to an oven assistance application. The kitchen system further comprises a smart device and an oven, wherein the application is stored in, functions on the smart device, and is configured to control the operation of the oven, e.g., temperature control, image capture, brightness modification, and so on. The application has at least one access to transmit information in a word, sound, or image form to a social platform via internet. While starting to obtain a signal including information from the oven, the application is configured to adjust the …

Vovoh_Ux_Id-05471, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention relates to a system capable of storing wordings or phrases as keywords provided from the user oral expression or with a physical user interface, associating appliance settings with the keywords for at least one cooking session, and allowing a user to change or request information of the appliance settings with reference to the previously provided keywords instead of technical specifications, e.g., hard code commends.

Accordingly, this system of the invention enhances the user experience for operating kitchen appliances.

Magnetic Stirrer Lid, Christian Mohr

Defensive Publications Series

The invention relates to a lid with a magnetic stirrer for cookware, which is heated by a surface-cooking home appliance, e.g., a hob appliance. The magnetic stirrer is formed in a rod shape, detachable from the lid, and includes a sensor for detecting either the internal temperature of the cookware or the rotational speed of the stirrer. The hob appliance includes a control unit, a heating unit, and a rotational driving unit, which are beneath the cooktop of the hob appliance. The heating unit is configured to heat the cookware placed on the cooktop, and the rotational driving unit is …

On-Device Query And Metadata Caching For Expedited Inference And Rendering Of Answer Cards, Keun Soo Yim

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes methods and techniques for mobile devices to enhance the user experience associated with search applications. In aspects, an Intent Manager associates a query suggestion to a corresponding answer card (e.g., search result) for a given query text. The association may involve the Intent Manager identifying that the submission of a query suggestion results in a search application presenting one or more corresponding answer cards. Further, the association may include the production of metadata relating the query text to the submitted query suggestion. The Intent Manager can then cache the metadata on the device. In doing so, when …

Improved Contextual Grounding By Combining Multiple Speech Transcription Hypotheses, Manaal Faruqui, Vishal Verma, Aditya Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

Processing a user’s voice command includes parsing the command to derive the components referred to therein. These identified components or arguments are then mapped to items or objects in the real world in a process known as “grounding.” In some cases, transcription inaccuracies can make it infeasible for a virtual assistant or other application to achieve accurate grounding, thus making it impossible to service the user’s command. This disclosure describes techniques to improve grounding by taking into account the top N highest-likelihood transcriptions for a user’s voice command along with contextual information accessed with the user’s permission. Improved query interpretation …

Quality Route Planning For Alternative Transport Modalities, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Bicyclists, pedestrians, and other non-motorized road-users have different concerns about the surrounding traffic and environmental factors, e.g., air quality, bicycle lane-widths, types, and speeds of adjacent traffic, etc., than regular (automobile) commuters. Such additional considerations are not usually accounted for in traditional vehicle routing by digital map or navigation applications. This disclosure describes techniques of route-planning that optimize safety and overall convenience for alternate transport modalities such as bicycle, open-top vehicles, non-motorized vehicles, etc. and for pedestrians. The techniques leverage location data, traffic data, street-level imagery, aerial imagery, etc., and assign a score to a travel route based on expected …