Patent ID: 8745250

Claim:
A method to implement multimodal proximity detection in a first electronic device, comprising: initiating an environmental sampling routine in the first electronic device by: activating an environmental sensor; collecting at least one sample of environmental data; extracting at least one feature set of the environmental data; generating a first obscured feature set from the feature set extracted from the first electronic device, wherein the first obscured feature set comprises a manipulated set of Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients extracted from the environmental data with portions of the feature set selective removed; transmitting the first obscured feature set from the first electronic device to a proximity server; and receiving, in the first electronic device, a signal indicating whether the first electronic device is proximate to a second electronic device; receiving, in the first electronic device, an identifier associated with the second electronic device if the device was proximate; and, establishing at least one context parameter based on the identifier when the device is proximate, wherein, in response to a proximity signal indicating that the first electronic device is proximate the second electronic device, the first electronic device: activates a trigger sensor to detect whether the first electronic device has moved; in response to a determination that the first electronic device has moved, transmits a movement signal to the proximity server, wherein the movement signal causes the proximity server to transmit an environmental sampling signal to the first electronic device and the second electronic device to repeat the environmental sampling routine.