Digital Commons Network^™

Distributed Policy Management For Service Provider Chains, Nagaraj Kenchaiah, Niranjan M. M

Defensive Publications Series

Techniques are described herein to provide distributed end-to-end policy management across a chain of service provider networks (i.e., administrative domains). The techniques leverage an agent-centric framework for a fully distributed peer-to-peer network that allows nodes to maintain decentralized tamper-proof hash chains (e.g., Holochain). With this framework, the techniques are able to quickly and conveniently indicate network policies across a chain of service providers, in a distributed manner, and guarantee that requirements of the policies are met along the chain of service providers.

Safety-Aware Routing Using Machine Learning, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Traditionally, vehicle routing is optimized for travel time or distance. However, there are contexts where routes that prioritize safety over other criteria are needed. This disclosure describes techniques that use publicly-available vehicle crash data and machine learning models trained on roadway characteristics, driver behavior, environmental factors, etc. to predict the likelihood of an accident on a given route. The historical data and the predictions made by the model are used as signals to rank recommended routes in a navigation system.

Inline Text Entry On Portable Electronic Devices, Chenxi Ni, Yuqing Zhu, Yanxiang Zhang, Adrian Pittman, Akshay Kannan, Yuanbo Zhang, James Su

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes systems and techniques to provide inline text entry on portable electronic devices. Portable electronic devices, such as smartphones, generally include an on-screen keyboard to allow users to input alphanumeric characters. These keyboards generally provide several suggestions of the word that the user is currently typing or the next word to be input. Because the keyboard has a limited area on the graphical user interface (GUI) to display candidate words, the keyboard can only present a few suggestions (e.g., two or three candidates), which are generally single-word candidates.

This publication describes a keyboard for portable electronic …

Displaying Occlusions In Augmented Reality, Xavi Benavides Palos, Joost Korngold

Defensive Publications Series

Augmented reality is used to display a view of physical space with virtual 3D objects inserted. When a virtual object is inserted into view in this manner, it can be difficult to determine whether the object fits in the space. Further, users can lose track of the object if it gets occluded by walls or other objects in the space. Per techniques of this disclosure, object boundaries are displayed to indicate whether the object fits in the space. Further, for objects that are hidden in space are displayed using X-ray and cutout shaders. Still further, it is ensured that object …

Global Product Catalog, Saurangshu Pandey

Defensive Publications Series

Currently, online retailers or sellers on online retail platforms do not have a standard product catalog that can be used across different e-commerce platforms in a seamless manner. Instead, sellers are required to create a product listing specifically for each platform. This disclosure describes a global catalog that utilizes a standardized schema to identify every product or service enabling the product or service to easily be published to any e-commerce platform. The global catalog can include product identifiers, product descriptions, multimedia related to the product, etc.

Battery Packaging For Superior Thermal Performance, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Heat build-up is a major design consideration in large battery modules such as those used in data centers. Excessive battery temperature can reduce the reliability of equipment in a data center and can pose safety problems. This disclosure describes techniques that encase the cells of the battery module in a potting medium, which can be a semi-rigid or liquid material of moderate-to-high thermal conductivity and low electrical conductivity. The encasing results in improved cooling, energy density, and safety.

Copper-Filled Solder Openings In Ball Grid Arrays For Reduced Electromigration, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

The high electric currents consumed by today’s microprocessors or other server chips can cause copper electromigration (undesired displacement of copper atoms) at the contact pads of the chips. Electromigration can result in the formation of voids, e.g., regions where the conductive material is partially or fully depleted, leading to malfunction. This disclosure describes techniques to reduce copper electromigration in integrated circuits by filling in vias for solder-ball openings with copper. Regions of current crowding at the copper-solder interface are effectively reinforced with a greater depth of copper, leading to extended device life.

Device To Attenuate The Oscillation In A Radar Signal For Measuring Liquid Metal Level In Restricted Openings, Jonathan Quisenberry, John Robert Buster Mccallum

Defensive Publications Series

Described is an invention to attenuate radar signal for measuring liquid metal levels in restricted openings. The invention may utilize channels or guides, such as fake walls, that allow a radar measurement device to receive an accurate signal. As the channels extend further, such as past 115 mm, the walls may remove the oscillation of the radar signal, providing for an accurate measurement of molten metal levels. Radar measurements can operate at a sweet spot, such as at 115 mm, by the new operational height obtained using the channels or guides. The graph below shows a range of distances that …

Natural Language Explanations For Unfulfilled Queries, Guillermo Garrido, Francisco Aliaga, Mike Kozhevnikov, Enrique Alfonseca, Lilian Zia, Chintu Kumar, Madelaine Plauché, Katherine Vadella, James Giangola

Defensive Publications Series

User requests cannot sometimes be fulfilled by a virtual assistant. In such cases, the virtual assistant typically informs the user that the question cannot be answered or the command cannot be performed, without providing an explanation of the reason for the failure to fulfill the user’s request. This disclosure describes techniques that enable a virtual assistant to provide the user a helpful explanation of why a particular request was not fulfilled. Further, the virtual assistant response can include information on how the user’s query was understood.

Incremental File Streaming Of A Package File For Application Installation On A Mobile Electronic Device, Jamal Eason, Yurii Zubrytskyi, Eugene Zemtsov, Todd Kennedy, Oleksiy Buynytskyy, Songchun Fan, Paul Lawrence

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes techniques to allow a mobile application to launch on a mobile electronic device (“mobile device”) once a portion of a package file associated with the application is transferred to the device using an incremental file streaming technology. An application may be created or modified by an application developer on a development device. The application can be packaged into a package file format that can be installed onto the mobile device for, e.g., testing the application by the application developer or use by the end user. The package file includes core files, for example executables, object, image, …

Systems And Methods For Enhanced Resistance Spot Welding With Textured Sheet Metal, Julio Malpica, Zeqin Liang, Sebastijan Jurendic, Mehdi Shafiei

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods for joining a first metal sheet with a second metal sheet are provided. The method includes applying a texture to a portion of a surface of the first metal sheet and positioning the first metal sheet relative to the second metal sheet such that the portion of the surface of the first metal sheet including the texture faces the second metal sheet. The method includes joining the first metal sheet to the second metal sheet through a joining technique at an interface of the portion of the surface of the first metal sheet comprising the texture with …

Electrode With Tip Life Improvement And Related Methods, Dechao Lin, Dewei Zhu, Zhuoru Wu, Zeqin Liang, Julio Malpica, Joerg Simon, Cyrille Bezencon

Defensive Publications Series

A resistance spot welding system includes an electrode with a cap that includes a cap body having a tip, a body cavity defined within the cap body, and a tip cavity defined within the cap body that extends from the body cavity towards the tip. A method of manufacturing the electrode includes forming a body cavity within a cap body of the electrode, and forming a tip cavity within the cap body of the electrode such that the tip cavity extends from the body cavity towards a tip of the cap body. In other aspects, a resistance spot welding system …

Apparatuses, Systems, And Methods For Calibrating Displays, Anonymous Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

A display calibration system may include (i) a spectrometry device positioned to capture light emitted by a group of sub-pixels in a sub-region of a display that is both (a) located within a light-emitting region of the display and (b) is smaller than the light-emitting region, (ii) at least one camera device positioned to capture light emitted by a plurality of sub-pixels, in the light-emitting region of the display, that includes the group of sub-pixels, and (iii) a calibration computing device that is (a) communicatively coupled to both the spectrometry device and the at least one camera device and that …

Identifying Interesting Video Segments, Victor Carbune, Alexandru Damian

Defensive Publications Series

Disclosed herein is an improved mechanism for identifying interesting video segments. The mechanism can identify a segment of a video being viewed by a user. The mechanism can determine whether the video segment is likely to be of interest to the user using a trained classification model. The mechanism can then, for example, save an indication of whether the segment is likely to be of interest to the user. The system can then loop back and identify a second segment of the video being viewed by the user.

Health Diagnostics Using User Utterances, Aleksandar Kracun, Ignacio Lopez Moreno

Defensive Publications Series

Respiratory illnesses can be hard to track and diagnose. Obtaining useful clinical data on these illnesses is difficult because it requires physical interaction, e.g., via nasal or sinus swab. It is known that respiratory illness can impact speech pathways. To this end, this disclosure describes techniques to use readily accessible software to obtain and classify potentially useful data. With user permission, utterances of the user, e.g., activation of a speech-activated device via a hotword, are analyzed to form speaker-ID models. These models are evaluated against additional utterances of the user in a sequential manner. The evaluation scores, along with the …

Smartphone Assisted Setup For Headless Devices, Erdi Chen

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques for secure setup and/or configuration for headless devices using a smartphone or other available device. A smartphone is connected to a headless device via USB and is utilized to perform setup and debug operations related to the headless device. The headless device advertises itself as an accessory device and provides a device ID and vendor ID to the smartphone. An app on the smartphone is launched with the headless device identifier as parameters. Additional communication between the headless device and the smartphone is performed over the connection using a custom protocol or encapsulated HTTP. The internet …

Automatic Erasure Of Persistent Storage For Data Security, Marcus Boerger

Defensive Publications Series

Non-volatile memories (NVMs) such as phase change memory (PCM) have speeds, latencies, and bandwidths close to those of random access memory (RAM). The performance and economy of PCM (and other NVMs) have led computer system designers to use NVM as swap space. However, swap data can include user information, including potentially sensitive information. The storage of such information in a NVM swap partition can enable an attacker to steal information from a victim’s computer, e.g., by forcing it to sleep and then reading the content of the NVM in another system. Per the techniques of this disclosure, such attacks on …

Quality Improvement Of Self-Piercing Riveting Of High Strength Aluminum Alloys, Dechao Lin, Dewei Zhu, Julio Malpica, Sebastijan Jurendic, Zeqin Liang, Samuel Robert Wagstaff, David Leyvraz, Julie Richard, Tudor Piroteala, Patrick Lester, Cedric Wu

Defensive Publications Series

Described are metal products including metal alloy substrates joined by self-piercing rivets, and methods and apparatus for joining metal alloy substrates using self-piercing rivets. For high-strength metal alloy substrates, the disclosed joining techniques involve retrogressing portions of the metal alloy substrates, such as by heating using a laser heating source, a conductive heating source, or an inductive heating source, to produce crack-free joined metal products.

Color Conversion Method For A Dark Theme User Interface, Sianyi Huang

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes systems and techniques for providing a color conversion method for a dark theme user interface (UI) on a portable electronic device when a blue light filtering mode is enabled. Portable electronic devices, such as smartphones, often include a dark theme UI that displays the UI portion of a display of the portable electronic device displaying dark colors. When blue light filtering is enabled on the portable electronic device displaying the dark theme UI, the portable electronic device performs calculations to determine a color transform matrix (M) for blue light filtering and an inverse color transform matrix (M …

Device Visual Check Before Displaying Content

Defensive Publications Series

The display device with a built-in camera is used to verify that a viewer is not recording the content being displayed on the display device with a camcorder. Before and during the playback of content, the display will scan the room and use object recognition and artificial intelligence to identify whether or not a camcorder is pointed towards it. There is a problem in the content distribution and Digital Rights Management (DRM) industry that has been intractable. A user can point a camcorder toward a high resolution display, e.g. TV, and record premium content being distributed to the home market. …

Wi-Fi And Cell Coexistence Mechanism Accounting For Co-Interference, Sriram Sundararajan, Jibing Wang, Nick Mcdonnell, Nihar Jindal

Defensive Publications Series

Co-interference between Wi-Fi and cellular radios, e.g., in a wireless communication device that is concurrently operating using Wi-Fi and cellular radio technologies, is managed using victim tables that indicate channels that can potentially co-interfere. The victim tables are implemented as lookup tables (LUTs) that include entries for combinations of cell band and Wi-Fi and/or channel. The entries indicate whether the Wi-Fi channel is safe or should be avoided because there is a high likelihood of co-interference. The entries also include a power back off that indicates that the Wi-Fi subsystem is to back off its transmission power setting by …

Blockchain-Based Notarization For Detection Of Forged Multimedia Content, Minda Deng, Randall Spangler

Defensive Publications Series

Technologies such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) and other machine learning techniques have made it easy for malicious parties to create forged or fake content such as images and videos. It is difficult to determine the provenance of such content. This disclosure describes techniques that utilize a notarization system based on a blockchain ledger. New content is added to the system along with a secure time code that marks the first occurrence of the content and hashed content identifiers. The use of timecode imposes a time limitation within which malicious actors need to generate forged or fake content, which along …

A Generic Cache-Based Deployment Pipeline Optimization Technique, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

A deployment pipeline is basically a workflow with steps that are triggered by changes in source

code. The idea disclosed here optimizes deployment pipelines in general by showing how they

can cache static and dynamic artifacts that can be reused by different pipeline runs.

Integrating Neuromuscular And Touchscreen Input For Machine Control, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

Current touchscreen interfaces are unable to distinguish between individual fingers or to determine poses associated with the user’s hand. This limits the use of touchscreens in recognizing user input. As discussed herein, a statistical model can be trained using training data that includes sensor readings known to be associated with various hand poses and gestures. The trained statistical model can be configured to determine arm, hand, and/or figure configurations and forces (e.g., handstates) based on sensor readings, e.g., obtained via a wearable device such as a wristband with wearable sensors. The statistical model can identify the input from the handstate …

Mechanism For Identifying Export Rules For A Given Subnet From An Export Rule String, Kyle Seipp, Jesse Salomon

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Rapid Integration Of Wifi Hotspots With A Cloud-Based Aaa Service, Huaiyu Liu, Timothy D. R. Hartley

Defensive Publications Series

Public WiFi is typically provided by a network of smaller (local-area), independent service providers internetworked by a larger (wide-area) service provider. Currently, integration between the local-area and the wide-area service providers is a tedious process. This disclosure describes a set of vendor-agnostic application program interfaces (APIs) that enable a WiFi hotspot provider to integrate its control plane with a cloud-based authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) service in a self-service manner, without the direct involvement of personnel from the cloud service. This set of APIs enable a WiFi provider to self-register and self-configure its WiFi devices, such as controllers, with the …

Determining The Reliability Of A Robotic Surgical System For Producing Good Clinical Outcomes, Think Surgical, Inc.

Defensive Publications Series

A method to determine the reliability of a robotic surgical system for producing good clinical outcomes is described herein. The method utilizes machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) to classify, analyze, or rank how reliable a robotic system is at producing good clinical outcomes as a function of patient specific factors, medical staff factors, robotic system factors, and/or intraoperative factors. A plurality of potential inputs for the ML or AI algorithms is provided as well as the possible outputs for a given robotic system. The method may be particularly useful for surgical robot manufacturers, surgeons, and health care facilities.

Thermal Camera Calibration Using Built-In Calibration Markers For Continuous Calibration, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

The thermal camera is a critical component of some 3D printers, hence it must always be well

calibrated. This calibration has two aspects to it: 1) thermal reading accuracy (thermal

calibration) and 2) geometrical positioning accuracy (optical calibration).

Current solutions for optical calibrations are based on printing FA or DA spots (we call these

processes “thermal camera printing calibration” and “thermal camera startup calibration”,

respectively), which consume time, build material and fluids. The thermal check is done using the

“Thermocamera Verification Test”, which is based on using a rectangular target located on the

carriage surface and heating it using one …

Build Unit's Strip Heaters Moisture Removal Method By Using Heating Technology, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure relates to the field of safety in electrical heaters that use Magnesium Oxide as isolator

between live and ground.

A process is disclosed that removes the moisture absorbed by the strip heaters by using a heating

system, without powering on the three‐dimensional build unit, to avoid potential safety users’issues

caused by electrical arcs in the build unit.

Some three‐dimensional printing build units use strip heaters technology. The electrical isolation of the

strip heaters is made using Magnesium Oxide (MgO) which is a hygroscopic solid material which absorbs

humidity from the surrounding environment arising moisture on the strip heaters. …

Efficient Storage Of Data Chunks In Solid State Drives, Bin Tan, Ricky Benitez, Narges Shahidi

Defensive Publications Series

The data update mechanism for an SSD involves overprovisioning, e.g., a storage footprint larger than the actual data size, and write amplification, e.g., a physical amount of information written being a multiple of the actual amount of information. Both these overheads are exacerbated when applications randomly generate data chunks of size that is small compared to the size of the designed erase unit of the SSD. Per the techniques of this disclosure, small, random data chunks of similar size are padded such that a sequence of such data chunks aligns to the erase unit boundary of the SSD. At the …