Patent Issued for Asynchronous virtual collaboration environments (USPTO 11875309): State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company
2024 FEB 06 (NewsRx) -- By a
The patent’s inventors are Ho, An (
This patent was filed on
From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “Virtual reality (VR) systems have been developed that allow users to view and interact with components of virtual environments. These virtual environments may be either created as fictional environments or digitized representations of physical environments. For example, existing processes may be used to generate virtual environments representing the interior of a famous building or a local area of significance for virtual sight-seeing and tours, such as virtual environments representing the United States Capitol building and grounds. Additionally, multiple-user VR systems exist, but the collaboration capabilities of such systems are inadequate for many purposes, such as collaboration and training relating to assessment of physical sites.
“Asynchronous collaboration creates particular challenges for VR systems. While solutions for asynchronous collaboration outside of virtual environments by sharing electronic documents (e.g., text documents or spreadsheets) are known, asynchronous collaboration in virtual environments would provide more effective collaboration. However, neither current VR systems nor current electronic collaboration systems provide asynchronous collaboration capabilities.
“Various projects across an array of industries require collaborative interaction between individuals on a physical site, such that some of the individuals may need to travel to the physical site. Travel continues to be necessary in many situations because telephony and fixed-point digital image analysis (e.g., video conferences) do not allow the individuals to move about the physical site to address particular issues or concerns as they arise. Additionally, wireless communication is often insufficient or unreliable at such sites. Travel is time-consuming, inconvenient, and costly. In some situations, experts may be nearly constantly travelling to various sites to collaborate with local individuals. For example, expert trainers such as business underwriting specialists frequently travel to meet with local trainees such as insurance agents to provide training and expert analysis of local sites, such as commercial properties in a town. Considerable improvements in time and cost efficiency could be achieved if such individuals could collaborate remotely, but existing systems are ineffective in facilitating such collaboration.”
Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The present application discloses methods, systems, and computer-readable media storing instructions to facilitate asynchronous virtual collaboration between remote users. As described herein, the disclosed aspects improve existing VR systems by adding asynchronous collaborative capabilities to virtual environments, thereby enabling remote users to interact effectively with each other without requiring them to share a single virtual collaboration session. Various aspects are summarized below and described in further detail herein.
“The present application discloses methods, systems, and computer-readable media storing instructions for recording virtual collaboration between a plurality of users during a virtual collaboration session. This may include establishing a first communication connection via a communication network with a first virtual environment interface device associated with a first user of the plurality of users; establishing a second communication connection via the communication network with a second virtual environment interface device associated with a second user of the plurality of users; establishing a communication channel between the first user and the second user via the first and second communication connections for facilitating bidirectional communication by routing real-time communication data between the first user and the second user during the virtual collaboration session; providing a virtual environment representing a physical location including a building to the first and second virtual environment interface devices for presentation to the first and second users; causing one or more data capture tools to be presented to at least the second user within the virtual environment; receiving a data capture command from the second user (which data capture command may be associated with a data capture tool of the one or more data capture tools); determining an environmental state of the virtual environment relative to the second user at the time of the data capture command based upon the data capture tool; generating a limited representation of the virtual environment based upon the data capture command and the environmental state; and/or storing the limited representation of the virtual environment for later review.
“In some embodiments, the data capture tool may be a virtual camera tool. In such embodiments, the environmental state of the virtual environment may include a viewing perspective of the second user within the virtual environment, and the limited representation of the virtual environment may be a fixed-view two-dimensional image from the viewing perspective of the second user. The environmental state of the virtual environment may further include a viewing window centered on a gaze location of the second user, in which case the fixed-view two-dimensional image may capture the viewing window.
“In further embodiments, the data capture tool may be a video recording tool. In such embodiments, the environmental state of the virtual environment may include a plurality of movements and viewing perspectives of the second user within the virtual environment, and the limited representation of the virtual environment may include a recording of the movements and the viewing perspectives of the second user over a time period during the virtual collaboration session. The movements of the second user may include repositioning within the virtual environment and hand movements of the second user within the virtual environment.
“Additionally, the recording may include an avatar representing the movements of the second user within the virtual environment.”
The claims supplied by the inventors are:
“1. A computer-implemented method for recording a virtual collaboration session between a plurality of users, comprising: establishing, by a processor and via a communication network, a communication channel between a first interface device and a second interface device by routing communication data between the first interface device and the second interface device during the virtual collaboration session, the second interface device associated with a user of the plurality of users; generating, by the processor, a virtual environment representing a physical location including a building; providing, by the processor and via the communication network, the virtual environment to the first interface device and to the second interface device; causing, by the processor, a data capture tool to be presented via at least the second interface device and within the virtual environment, wherein the data capture tool includes a virtual recording tool that is configured to capture session data within the virtual environment; receiving, by the processor and via the communication network, a data capture command from the second interface device, wherein the data capture command: is generated by the second interface device at a particular time, and comprises a request to capture a virtual video from a viewing perspective of the second interface device within the virtual environment with the data capture tool; determining, by the processor, a state of the virtual environment as presented via the second interface device at the particular time; generating, by the processor, a representation of the virtual environment, wherein the representation illustrates the physical location according to the state of the virtual environment, and the representation includes the virtual video representing movements of the user interacting with the virtual environment and providing an assessment of the building; and storing the representation in a memory.
“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein: the state of the virtual environment includes the viewing perspective as presented via the second interface device; and the representation of the virtual environment is a fixed-view two-dimensional image from the viewing perspective.
“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein: the state of the virtual environment includes a viewing window centered on a gaze location as presented via the second interface device; and the fixed-view two-dimensional image captures the viewing window.
“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein: the state of the virtual environment includes the movements and viewing perspectives as presented via the second interface device; and the representation of the virtual environment includes a recording of the movements and the viewing perspectives over a time period during the virtual collaboration session.
“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein: the movements include repositioning within the virtual environment as presented via the second interface device.
“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein: the data capture tool includes a user annotation tool configured to capture a second representation of a region of the virtual environment and a user annotation associated with the region of the virtual environment; the state of the virtual environment includes a position within the virtual environment as presented via the second interface device; and the representation of the virtual environment includes the second representation of the region of the virtual environment and the user annotation.
“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the user annotation includes a third representation of a measurement of a physical distance at the physical location generated from a virtual distance between locations within the virtual environment.
“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: accessing, by a second processor of a computing device via the communication network, a recording of the virtual collaboration session, wherein the recording of the virtual collaboration session includes a plurality of representations of the virtual environment, including the representation of the virtual environment; and presenting, by a display of the computing device, the representation of the virtual environment to a third interface device.
“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprising: receiving, by the second processor, a user note associated with a portion of the representation of the virtual environment from the third interface device; and storing, in memory, a record of the user note indicating the portion of the representation of the virtual environment, wherein the record of the user note is stored separately from the representation of the recording of the virtual collaboration session.
“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein the user note includes an evaluation of actions during the virtual collaboration session relating to the assessment of the physical location including the building based at least in part upon the data capture command from the second interface device.
“11. A computer system for recording a virtual collaboration session between a plurality of users, comprising: one or more processors; a communication module communicatively connected to the one or more processors and configured to communicate with computing devices via a communication network; and a non-transitory program memory communicatively coupled to the one or more processors and storing executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computer system to: establish, via the communication network, a communication channel between a first interface device and a second interface device by routing communication data between the first interface device and the second interface device during the virtual collaboration session, the second interface device associated with a user of the plurality of users; generate a virtual environment representing a physical location including a building; provide, via the communication network, the virtual environment to the first interface device and to the second interface device; cause a data capture tool to be presented via at least the second interface device and within the virtual environment, wherein the data capture tool includes a virtual recording tool that is configured to capture session data within the virtual environment; receive, via the communication network, a data capture command from the second interface device, wherein the data capture command: is generated by the second interface device at a particular time, and comprises a request to capture a virtual video from a viewing perspective of the second interface device within the virtual environment and with the data capture tool; determine a state of the virtual environment as presented via the second interface device at the particular time; generate a representation of the virtual environment, wherein the representation illustrates the physical location according to the state of the virtual environment, and the representation includes the virtual video representing movements of the user interacting with the virtual environment and providing an assessment of the building; and store the representation in the non-transitory program memory.
“12. The computer system of claim 11, wherein: the data capture tool is a virtual camera tool; the state of the virtual environment includes the viewing perspective of the second interface device within the virtual environment; and the representation of the virtual environment is a fixed-view two-dimensional image from the viewing perspective of the second interface device.
“13. The computer system of claim 11, wherein: the data capture tool is a video recording tool; the state of the virtual environment includes the movements and viewing perspectives of the second interface device within the virtual environment; and the representation of the virtual environment includes a recording of the movements and the viewing perspectives of the second interface device over a time period during the virtual collaboration session.
“14. The computer system of claim 11, wherein: the data capture tool is a user annotation tool configured to capture a second representation of a region of the virtual environment and a user annotation associated with the region of the virtual environment; the state of the virtual environment includes a position of the second interface device within the virtual environment; and the representation of the virtual environment includes the second representation of the region of the virtual environment and the user annotation.
“15. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the executable instructions further cause the computer system to: receive a request for a recording of the virtual collaboration session from a computing device associated with a third interface device via the communication module, wherein the recording of the virtual collaboration session includes a plurality of representations of the virtual environment, including the representation of the virtual environment; access the representation of the virtual environment; and send the representation of the virtual environment to the computing device via the communication module for presentation to the third interface device.”
There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.
For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Ho, An. Asynchronous virtual collaboration environments.
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