Patent ID: 11962851
Assignee: THE NIELSEN COMPANY (US), LLC
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. An apparatus to measure an audience in a media environment, the apparatus comprising:
a thermal image detector;
a visible light camera;
a people meter interface; and
a control system to:
identify, based on a frame of thermal image data captured in the media environment by the thermal image detector, at least one heat blob in the media environment;
cause a field of view of the visible light camera to be focused to correspond to a location of the at least one heat blob in the media environment;
obtain a frame of audience image data of the focused field of view captured by the visible light camera;
identify a face of an audience member based on the frame of audience image data; and
forgo prompting for audience identification information via the people meter interface for a first time period immediately after identifying the face of the audience member.