Patent Document ID: 7598976
Application ID: 10519483
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A system for aiding a person with a visual impairment or visual obstruction, comprising: means for sensing time/space characteristics and physical characteristics information about a plurality of objects in a field of view of said person, said sensing means operating by reflecting and capturing laser pulses from the surfaces of said plurality of objects present in close range to said person to produce a cloud of spatial pixels (voxels) representing points on all said surfaces which can be observed from said person's point of view; means for identifying, interpreting, decomposing, and synthesizing said time/space characteristics and physical characteristics information and for high-level characterizing said plurality of objects in an object class, said means for identifying operating by: applying a set of low-level algorithms to decompose said cloud into a set of regular surfaces defined by parameters of type, dimensions, orientation in space, and relative to said user velocity vector, and applying a set of high-level algorithms to act on said surfaces to combine them into identified 3-D objects with assigned names; and means for verbally communicating output and input information between said system and said user, wherein said output information further comprises a scene description about said surrounding environment within the field of view of said person, wherein said scene description is verbally communicated in conversational speech to said person based on the distance of said plurality of objects to said user, the closest being communicated first as having a higher priority, wherein said scene description comprises said plurality of objects identified by said system, together with properties such as their position information, physical characteristics, and relative velocity vectors indicating motion, and wherein said properties are provided by an Object Synthesis and Recognition module which associates said properties with an identified object class.