Abstract:
A computer system including a network for obtaining complete information as to the best mode for a first person to communicate with a second person comprising means for sensing the presence of the second person in a given area and the activity in which he is engaged; means for connecting the means for sensing to the network; and means connected to the network for enabling the first person to determine the presence and status of messages in the form of e-mail or voice mail directed to the second person.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
         [0001]    The invention is related to obtaining the information that will help to identify and enable the best communication mode (visit, mail, phone, fax, etc.) between people at different locations, such as different offices.  
         BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0002]    In real-time, if a person would like to contact somebody in the same building but in a different office, there are several options. The person may telephone the person they are trying to reach, send them an e-mail, send them an “instant” message, or, simply go to their office. Often-times, a problem results because the person in the office may be busy: on the phone, meeting with somebody in the office, or away at a meeting. There are certain methods that can assist in determining what the person is doing and whether they are busy or not. Programs like lotus notes-calendar allow for somebody to check the status of somebody else&#39;s schedule. This information does not suffice because it only describes meetings and appointments and a person may be busy doing other things in between meetings and appointments, like, telephone calls. Therefore, people who would like to contact another person must figure out the best way in which to reach that person. As noted, they may go to the person&#39;s office, call them, or, send an e-mail. But, the person in the office may be busy in a meeting, on the telephone or not returning e-mails because of being so backed up.  
         OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION  
         [0003]    A principal object of the present invention is to enable a user to have complete information so that he may select the best communication mode for reaching other people (mail, visit office, fax, phone, etc.). Another object of the invention is to achieve the capability that will permit the user to understand I whether a person in an office is available and is disposed for a meeting or other modes of communication.  
         SUMMARY  
         [0004]    The present invention involves a system that gives a complete list and description on the computer of a person&#39;s whereabouts and activities in a certain area. For instance, in a building the computer gives the full information about whether a person is talking on the telephone, or whether the person checked their phone messages recently. It also gives full information about email and whether the person has recently checked e-mail or is presently checking the e-mail. Most importantly, it gives a present status of the person in the office: does the person have a visitor, is the person at a meeting, is the person eating lunch, or is the person taking a nap.  
           [0005]    Information about a person&#39;s office status can be identified through a video camera and other sensors. This information may be about how long a person is in the office and what type of situation the person is in. The information from the camera or other video sensors is sent to a special computer that analyzes the images and recognizes the situation and status of the person: is the person asleep, talking on the phone, relaxed. Some programs have been developed that can even figure out what type of mood a certain person may be in. See the patent application entitled “Conversational Data Mining” filed on Aug. 10, 1999. Therefore, this program may also let a user know what type of mood the other person is in and this may affect whether or not they choose to visit/contact the person. An option may be existent already, if a person desires privacy, he may choose to disclose none, or only a limited amount of information about his status. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0006]    [0006]FIG. 1 is a block diagram that depicts a series of offices that are connected to a network.  
         [0007]    [0007]FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the situation analyzer server, depicting its constituents.  
         [0008]    [0008]FIG. 3 depicts an example of what may be on a user&#39;s display when the user is deciding in which way they should contact a specific person.  
         [0009]    [0009]FIG. 4 is a block diagram of the image classificator, which depicts its constituents.  
         [0010]    [0010]FIG. 5 is a block diagram of the situation image evaluator as well as the labeler.  
         [0011]    [0011]FIG. 6 is a general flowchart of the software part of the invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
       [0012]    [0012]FIG. 1 shows a series of offices  101 ,  110 ,  120 , and  130  and these offices are connected to a network  100 . Each office contains a camera/sensor  103 , a computer  106  with a running CPU  102 , a telephone  150  and a fax  151 . There are two people in office  101  and the door  140  is open. A description of the situation in the office may be better described on the computer of a person who is interested in understanding the situation in office  101 . For example, a user needs to decide whether to visit office  101 . A camera can assist the user in making the decision of whether the user should visit office  101  in the following way: a camera may take an image of the door of office  101 . This image can be analyzed by a special application running on a CPU or sent to a situation analyzation server  105 . The situation analyzer server  105  which analyzes situations, decides which class they are in, and can identify the category that the person in office  101  is busy because there are two people  131  and  132  in the office and the door  140  is closed. The person in office  101  would be categorized as not busy if the door was open and there was only one person in the office. As a rule, if a person has an open office door (especially if he is a manager), this signifies that visitors are welcome.  
         [0013]    Information that a person is busy or that they have visitors may enter the computer  103  for the user that is in office  101 . Similarly, telephone and email status may be sent via the network  100  to another user in another office ( 104 ). The situation analyzer server  105  allows for users to know whether the person they are trying to reach is on the telephone, how many unheard voicemail messages does that person have, through the phone mail server  115 . This function serves to tell a user if it is worth leaving a voice-mail for a person who has a large amount of unchecked voice-mail. The analyzer  105  also has access to the e-mail server  116 , checking to see if the person the user is trying to reach has a large amount of e-mail to check and, therefore, would take a long time to reply to the user&#39;s e-mail. In many corporations, unheard phone-mail or unread e-mail is not kept in the user&#39;s office but on a server from which it is downloaded when the user chooses to listen to/read it. Therefore, if a user sees that a lot of messages (phone or e-mail) have accumulated on a server they may choose to save time by only going through the most urgent messages and eliminating the rest without reading them. If the user sees this type of situation but also notes that the person has no visitors, they may choose to visit the person in their office.  
         [0014]    In office  160 , there are no persons, therefore, a user must choose to either send an e-mail or make a telephone call and leave a message because of lack of other options. Office  110  has a person in it but the door is closed  142  because the person is very busy working.  
         [0015]    [0015]FIG. 2 depicts the constituents of the situation analyzer server  105 .  203  is a communication module which allows for the receipt of information over a network. Block  200  represents the input, an image, that enters into the communication module  203 . Information from an e-mail server, mainly how many messages are in a server from a certain name, enter the communication module and are represented by block  201 . Similarly, data from the phone mail server  202  enters the communication module  203  noting how many phone messages are unheard, and from whom they are sent. Module  204  is the image processing module that processes images so that they can be classified by the image classifier  206 . The image classifier will be described in detail in another figure. Reference “Apparatus and Method for User Recognition Employing Behavioral Passwords”, Y0998-033, was filed on May 15, 1998 as patent application Ser. No. 09/079,754, shows how images may be processed by the image processing module  204 . The situation image evaluation is represented by module  207  and is also depicted in another figure. The situation image evaluator functions to evaluate situations and identify whether a person is busy or not. This evaluator  207  may also have the ability to gauge how busy a person may be, or predict the chances that a person is not busy. Module  205  is a counter that helps to gauge how busy a person is by counting the amount of unread e-mail messages and unheard voice-mail messages. This module  205  also notes the speed with which these messages are read so as to better predict a time frame for when a user can expect a message to be read/heard. Module  208  is the e-mail and voice-mail evaluator that receives data from the counter and predicts the time frame and possibility that a message will be read-heard. This data is sent to the communication module and displayed on a user&#39;s computer.  
         [0016]    [0016]FIG. 3 gives an example of what may be on a user&#39;s display  300  when the user is deciding in which way they should contact a specific person. The user chooses a person&#39;s name in module  310 . After the name is chosen, either the person&#39;s address, e-mail or phone number is displayed in the next image. The user asks the computer how to connect to a person  320 ? After this question, several options are shown on the display of the computer e-mail  301 , phone  302 , or a personal office visit  303 . These options may also be represented graphically by the situation module. For instance, a drawer  304  may be 80% full symbolizing that person has 80% of their e-mail messages unread. Another image  305  may indicate that the person has 10% of their phone voice-mail unchecked, while yet another  306  may show an office with several people in it (symbolically represented by stick figures). Following this graphic is displayed  307  recommending the user to telephone the person they are trying to reach seeing this provides the best chance for earliest communication.  
         [0017]    [0017]FIG. 4 depicts module  206 , the image classifier. Module  400  digitizes and quantifies the input. Digitization means that the uninterrupted analog signal is split into frames according to certain time intervals. After every given amount of time an image is taken. The quantification of the input impels that the input is made rougher and cannot vary between different meanings for numbers. The meanings of the numbers which characterize the amplitude of the signal can take on only certain meaning. The digitized and quantified input from module  400  enters the comparator  401  which compares the images entering from module  400  with the set of prototype images in module  402 . For example, module  402  can contain prototype images of somebody looking at a computer screen, somebody getting up from a chair, or somebody talking on the telephone. The result of the comparison by the comparator  401  and the set of prototype images  402  goes into module  403 , the sequence of image prototypes. The sequence of image prototypes contains examples of how somebody may be having a conversation with somebody in another office, how somebody is holding the receiver for a telephone and is having a telephone conversation, or how somebody gets up from a chair and walks out of their own office. Module  405  interprets the orders of the sequences of image prototypes. This interpretation uses a set of sequences of classes  404 . The sequences of classes allow for a more general characterization of the sequences of image prototypes. For example, a person is working on the computer, a person is napping, a person is talking on the telephone, or a person is having a conversation. Module  406  is a labeler of what was interpreted in  405 . An example of a label may be—person is busy on the telephone, person is busy conversing with another person(s), person is busy on the computer, or on the other hand, person is free because they are not doing anything, or the person&#39;s telephone is free. In short, all of the elements used in FIG. 4 are examples of the more general outline of digitization, quantification interpretation which were described in the patent application entitled “Apparatus and Method for User Recognition Employing Behavioral Passwords”, Y0998-033, filed on May 15, 1998 as patent application Ser. No. 09/079,754.  
         [0018]    [0018]FIG. 5 depicts module  207 , the situation image evaluator, as well as the labeler  406  which also exists in module  207 . Module  500  consists of the labels being inputted from module  206  (depicted in FIG. 4). Matching of the labels occurs in module  501  with the label-evaluation database  502 . The label-evaluation database assigns a level to a person&#39;s business or freedom. This matching is done on the basis of different exemplary assignments of business or of freedom that are kept within the database. If there is a close match, a signal is sent to the evaluator  503  which then notifies the user if the person is busy, free, or not in the office.  
         [0019]    [0019]FIG. 6 is a general flowchart of the software portion of the invention involving the steps of the process carried out by the instruction of the CPU program. Such program is stored conventionally in a standard disk.  600  represents the capture of images of an office. Block  603  represents the operation of evaluating the image. Block  601  counts the e-mails that were read versus unread e-mail. Module  602  counts the phone messages that were listened to versus the phone messages not listened to. Module  604  evaluates the situation. The complex evaluation in module  605  consists of the situation evaluation  604  and the image evaluation  603 . Module  606  sends advice for method of communication to the user&#39;s display. In other words, telling the user to place a call, send an e-mail, or visit the office of the person they are trying to reach.  
         [0020]    The foregoing and still further objects and advantages of the present invention will be more apparent from the following detailed explanation of the preferred embodiments of the invention in connection with the accompanying drawings: