DEVICE AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY SWITCHING CAMERA OPERATING MODES Russian patent published in 2023 - IPC H04N23/667 

FIELD: smartphone camera.

SUBSTANCE: method for automatically switching operating modes of a smartphone camera and other similar devices. The result is achieved by first capturing an image of the scene, including the target object to be tracked, in one of: close-range, long-range shooting modes, optionally, providing data from at least one of: depth sensors, motion sensors, providing at least one of: stereo data, image data in at least two consecutive frames in one of: close shooting mode, long shooting mode, when receiving stereo data: determine the disparity D_k of the scene including the target object captured by the camera based on the received stereo data at a certain moment of time for each current frame, determine the distance d₁ from the camera to the target object and the measure of confidence R₁ of the resulting disparity D_k based on the obtained stereo data, when receiving image data: calculate the field of motion vectors on the scene including the target object captured by the camera, calculate by at least one of: a shift factor, a rotation factor, a scene zoom factor, based on the calculated field of scene motion vectors, optionally initializing a tracker for the target object for the current frame, determining a distance d₂ from the camera to the target object based on the zoom factor, and determine the measure of confidence R₂, determine the distance d₃ from the camera to the target object based on depth data using depth sensors and determine the measure of confidence R₃, determine the distance d₄ from the camera to the target object based on data from motion sensors and the measure of confidence R₄, when initializing the tracker: determine the distance d₅ and the confidence measure R₅ and perform a hybrid estimate of the distance from the camera to the target object in the current frame based on the obtained distance values d1, d₂, d₃, d₄, d₅ from the camera to the target object and confidence measures R₁, R₂, R₃, R₄, R₅, and the adjusted distance d_h from the camera to the target object in the current frame is determined, then a decision is made to switch the camera to the close shooting mode or to the far shooting mode based on the adjusted distance d_h.

EFFECT: reducing the time it takes for the camera to switch between modes, as well as increasing the accuracy of determining the shooting mode.

43 cl, 21 dwg