Patent ID: 7917935

Claim:
A system for mechanically moving an optical module in a webcam by tracking a user's face, the system comprising: an optical module in said webcam for capturing image data; a computer coupled via a bus to said webcam, with video data sent to the computer, and control signals sent from the computer to the webcam being both sent over the bus; computer readable media in said computer having computer readable instructions providing a driver, said driver including a machine vision module for: identifying the location of the user's face based on the captured image data, generating a boundary region within the field of view of the optical module, wherein the boundary region represents the location of a user's face, and wherein the boundary region is generated based on the location of the user's face identified in the identifying step, identifying a field of view of the optical module, and identifying a predetermined-threshold field of view smaller than the field of view of the optical module and larger than the boundary region; and a movement controlling module for: deciding to move the optical module to place the center of the boundary region inside the predetermined-threshold field of view if a center of the boundary region is outside of the predetermined-threshold field of view, and deciding not to move the optical module if the center of the boundary region is inside the predetermined-threshold field of view; a mechanical module in said webcam, communicatively coupled over said bus to the movement controlling module, for moving the optical module based on the decision of the movement controlling module; and computer readable media in said computer having computer readable instructions providing an application using said video data from said webcam, said application being independent of said driver.