Patent ID: 8392939

Claim:
An audience state estimation system comprising: imaging device for imaging an audience and generating a video signal relative to the audience thus imaged; movement amount detection device for detecting a movement amount of said audience based on said video signal, wherein the movement amount is determined from a magnitude of movement, periodicity of movement, a center of gravity of a power spectrum, a volume of sound, and periodicity of sound based on a contents provision state which indicates an environment condition of the audience that affects difficulty factors for obtaining movement of the audience and for obtaining sound of the audience, wherein the movement amount detection device discriminates and extracts a pixel range which is a flesh-color area identifying flesh color from said video signal, divides the extracted flesh-color area into blocks, and calculates a movement vector for each of the divided blocks, wherein the blocks include a face block representing a face unit of the audience and a hand block representing a hand unit of the audience, and block matching of a current image and a next or previous frame image is performed for each of the blocks, wherein the movement vector is the movement direction and the movement amount when a result of the block matching indicating images of the blocks are matched, wherein each of the divided blocks includes a plurality of pixels, and each of the plurality of pixels identifies flesh color; and estimation device for estimating an audience state based on a comparison result of said movement amount and a predetermined reference level, wherein said estimation device estimates said audience state to be in a state of beating time with the hands when said movement periodicity is larger than the predetermined reference level, and estimates said audience state to be in a state of clapping when said movement periodicity is not larger than said predetermined reference level.