FORM 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 OF 1970)
&
PATENTS RULES, 2006
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION (SECTION 10; RULE 13)
Title: NOVEL PROJECTOR CAMERA SYSTEMS.
Applicants:
IITB-MONASH RESEARCH ACADEMY, HAVING ITS OFFICE AT : IIT BOMBAY, POWAI, MUMBAI: 400076.
THE FOLLOWING SPECIFICATION DESCRIBES THE NATURE OF THE INVENTION

Technical Field:
The present invention relates to improvements in projector systems or projector based systems. Particularly, the present invention relates to intelligent projectors.
Background:
Projectors have become a common equipment used at most places requiring information to be shared within a group of people by the simple means of projecting relevant data on a screen. Projectors have a prominent use in classrooms and conferences where sometimes the display surface is used for dual purposes of writing and projecting. Further:
1) During a presentation a presenter may want to use the board exclusively for writing additional material before resuming the presentation. This requires the projector to be turned off, the board then used for writing, and subsequently the projector to be turned on. These steps have to be followed every time the presenter wishes to write on the board.
2) Quite often, the presenter may wish to write on the board while retaining the contents of the slides, thereby embellishing the presentation. The board therefore is required to be usable for both purposes, simultaneously.
3) There are situations when the presenter interacts with the audience. He may block the projector light and cast a shadow on the display screen making the

contents of the slide in some regions unreadable for some members of the audience.
4) After presentations, there are question-answer sessions when the presenter interacts with the audience. The projector light sometimes falls onto the presenter's face thus causing discomfort. To avoid projector light, the presenter has to constrain her movements to either side of the projection area. This restriction of movements is not only uncomfortable for the presenter but also undesirable for effective interaction.
5) Applications generally use projectors in full screen mode to ensure maximum utilization of the available projection real estate. Scenarios mentioned in points 2 and 3 can benefit from the use of only part of the screen for the presentation; the part of the screen that is available should be discovered automatically, and used wisely.
The aforesaid are some of the scenarios which are not taken care of in conventional projectors systems.
Object of the invention:
The present invention ameliorates the aforesaid drawbacks by providing a system which can solve these problems and contribute to the large community of the users of projector systems.

The present invention is designed to address various issues faced in conventional presentations where the projectors act as passive devices. The purpose of the invention is to make the environment smart and interactive by adding the intelligence to the projector. The projector thus becomes environment aware when aided with a camera and a system that can guide it to act according to direct/indirect clues collected from the environment.
Summary of the invention:
A projector system comprising: a projector for projecting at least an image onto a screen; means to capture gestures of or inputs from presenter; database to store predefined gestures, such that captured gestures of presenter are compared with said database to provide input to the said system to operate in different modes, a processor.
The intelligence so added to the projector enables it to solve the general issues, seen earlier, faced in conventional presentations thus defining a new way of making presentations and improving general presentation experience of both the presenter and the audience.
Detailed description of the invention:
The invention solves the problems experienced in conventional presentation environments by creating an interactive presentation environment by adding the

intelligence to the projector system. The invention handles different presentation scenarios and is guided by the presenter as to what action to perform. The interaction between the presenter and the system is by means of gestures or some other means.
The present invention relates to an intelligent projector which interprets the inputs given to it by a camera. The presenter interacts with the projector using gestures and other modes of communication with the projector, such as a keyboard, or a mouse, or any device capable of sending commands to a projector or computer, he present invention is provided with a system which is aided with a camera which captures the user gestures. The captured images are provided as input to the system. The system interprets the gestures as an indication to perform some action solving one or more of the above problems.
For handling different scenarios, the system is driven into different modes (explained hereinafter) which define the action to be performed. User does predefined gestures which are captured using a camera as a sequence of images. Using a Gesture Recognition algorithm on the captured images of the present invention, the gesture done by the presenter is identified and the system mode is set depending on the gesture performed. The camera is controlled by the algorithm to observe the environment.
The system handles some scenarios where the complete display area is not available for projecting slide contents. For this, the contents of the slide are

'intelligently restructured' to fit in the available display area. Content based Retargeting is used to identify a possible structuring of the slide contents to fit in the available area.
The system operates in following modes. For every mode, the algorithm determines the input to be given to the projector to achieve the desired projection. Within each mode, the algorithm supports different activities, besides the standard activity of detecting gestures and changing mode.
Mode Half: In this mode, only half of the display area is used for projecting the slides leaving the other half to be used by presenter for writing. The contents of the slide are retargeted to fit half the width of the display area. Further, the system detects which half the presenter is standing in, and leaves the appropriate half for writing.
Mode Intelligent: This mode can be used when the moving presenter casts a shadow on display surface and thus making it difficult to read the slide contents. The slide contents are retargeted to fit in the area available for projection i.e. the area un-occluded by the presenter.
Mode 0: In this mode, the system guides the projector to project a white slide so the presenter can use the display surface which is a board exclusively for writing.
Mode 1: In this mode, the system guides the projector to project a black slide so

the presenter is not blinded by the projector light allowing her to move freely across the projection area.
Mode Conventional: In this mode, the system behaves like conventional projectors. No retargeting of the projected images is done.
Content based Re-targeting
The system automatically re-targets the input slide for projection in the available real estate depending on the Mode. In Mode Half the slide contents are re-targeted to half the screen size, and in Mode Intelligent the slide contents are re-targeted to the intelligently chosen un-occluded space.
The generation of re-targeted slide is based on the content of the slide and maintains the structure and information content of the original slide. The technique is independent of the authoring tool using which the original slide was created because it re-targets the image of the original slide, captured by the present invention, to generate the re-targeted image.
Initially, the original slide contents are parsed and broken into lines, words, characters and images. The system then computes an optimal re-targeting size so that the entire content can fit into the available display space. The re-targeted slide is then put together by assembling the content at optimal size in the correct order.

The above mentioned problems are addressed in the following ways:
1) The presenter is asked to do a particular/pre-defined gesture which indicates that he/she wants to write on the board, instead of displaying the slide. The system then captures the said gesture and instructs the projector to project a white slide, making available the space for writing and thereby avoiding the process of turning off and turning on the projector. After the presenter is done writing, another pre-defined gesture is performed which tells the system to resume the presentation.
2) The system is guided into the Mode Half. The system can be driven into this mode by doing a particular/pre-defined gesture. In this mode the projector only uses half the display screen for projection. The other half is left for writing. The system detects which half the presenter is standing in, and leaves the appropriate half for writing.
3) To address the problem at Sr No 3 above, the system is guided into the Mode Intelligent. The system can be driven into this mode by doing a particular/pre-defined gesture. In this mode the system detects the area of the display screen occluded/blocked by the presenter and uses the remaining area for projection. Out of the available area a sub-area is intelligently chosen for display.
4) The presenter does a particular/predefined gesture which indicates that he/she does not want the projector light to blind her while she is interacting with the audience. The system guides the projector to project a black slide and thus stops the blinding light on the presenter.

5) When the system is operating in Mode Half or Mode Intelligent, the form of the original slides is extensively modified without changing the content, and re-targeted to fit into the limited space available for projection. In Mode Half, the slide contents are re-targeted to half the screen size, and in Mode Intelligent the slide contents are re-targeted to the intelligently chosen un-occluded space. The generation of the re-targeted slide is based on the content of the slide and maintains the structure and information content of the original slide. The above is achieved by the Content based Re-targeting technique.
Although the invention has been described in terms of particular embodiments and applications, one of ordinary skill in the art, in light of this teaching, can generate additional embodiments and modifications without departing from the spirit of or exceeding the scope of the claimed invention. It should be emphasized that the above-described embodiments of the present invention, particularly any "preferred" embodiments, are merely possible examples of the invention of implementations, merely set forth for a clear understanding of the principles of the invention. Accordingly, it is to be understood that the drawings and descriptions herein are preferred by way of example to facilitate comprehension of the invention and should not be construed to limit the scope thereof.

We Claim:
1. A projector system comprising:
(a) a projector for projecting at least an image onto a screen;
(b) means to capture gestures of or inputs from presenter;
(c) database to store predefined gestures,
such that captured gestures of presenter are compared with said database to provide input to the said system to operate in different modes.
(d) A processor.
2. A projector system as claimed in Claim 1, wherein said means to capture gestures of presenter is a camera.
3. A projector system as claimed in Claim 2, wherein said projector projects a white slide making available a space for writing on said screen.
4. A projector system as claimed in Claim 2, wherein said system detects the side where said presenter is standing and leaves the other half for writing.
5. A projector system as claimed in Claim 2, wherein said system detects area of said screen occluded by said presenter and uses the remaining area for projection.

6. A projector system as claimed in Claim 2, wherein said system guides said projector to project a black slide and stop the blinding light on said presenter.
7. A projector system as claimed in Claim 4 or 5, wherein the slide contents are re-targeted to automatically fit into smaller portions of said screen.