Patent Document ID: 9713982
Application ID: 14285466
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of determining a distance to an object by a robotic device, the method comprising: interleaving left and right images of the device surroundings to produce an interleaved video stream; evaluating the video stream to determine a distance to and a motion of an object in a visual scene associated with the surroundings visual scene, the evaluating the video stream comprising encoding the video stream using an encoder process comprising: motion estimation configured to provide information related to a first displacement of a first representation of the object within a first image of the interleaved video stream relative to a second representation of the object within a second image of the interleaved video stream; and motion estimation configured to provide information related to a second displacement of the second representation of the object within the second image of the interleaved video stream relative to a third representation of the object within a third image of the interleaved video stream; wherein the first displacement characterizes the distance to the object, and the second displacement characterizes the motion of the object; and producing an encoded frame stream resultant from the encoder process, the encoded frame stream comprising a sequence of encoded frames associated with (i) the distance to the object and (ii) the motion of the object; causing the robotic device to execute an action based at least in part on the distance; wherein: the left and the right images are provided by a left and right camera, respectively, the right camera disposed spatially from the left camera on the device; and the interleaving and the evaluating cooperate to effectuate a reduction in an energy use compared to executing the action without the interleaving.