JP2002323858A - Electric appliance with information display device and device for moving information display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make possible for anybody having a different point of sight in height to easily watch the display of an information display device attached to various devices including electric appliances. SOLUTION: A user X stands in front of the door 2 of a refrigerator main body 1. A distance from a camera 4 to the user X is set to be L1, and a photographing angle by the camera 4 is set to be θ. The photographing angle is set so that the center of user's eyes is positioned at the center of the image photographed by the camera 4. The height of use's eye is calculated by the distance L1 and the angle α. Provided that the height H is positioned downward by L2 from the camera in the vertical direction, the distance L2 is obtained by calculating an equation, L2=L1cosθ. The moving distance of the image display device is calculated by calculating a difference between H and the height of the center of the image display device in the vertical direction on an image display device mounting member 5 at the time.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a home appliance with an information display device capable of displaying various types of information and a device for moving the information display device. The present invention relates to a home appliance with an information display device that can be displayed and a device for moving the information display device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, networks represented by the Internet have rapidly spread, and home appliances connectable to the networks have been proposed. Accompanying this, at the exhibition, for example, a prototype of a refrigerator having a terminal connected to the Internet and capable of displaying information is exhibited.

FIG. 11 is a perspective view of a refrigerator with an information display device, which is an example of a conventional home appliance with an information display device. In a conventional refrigerator with an information display device, a door 102 is attached to the front of a refrigerator main body 101. An information display device 103 and an imaging device 104 are attached to the surface of the door 102.

[0004] The information display device 103 displays inventory information in the refrigerator, message information, recipe information, information received from a communication line, and the like. Further, although omitted in FIG. 11, the information display device 103 was provided with a touch sensor or was capable of pen input. Thereby, the user could also input information to the information display device 103.

[0005]

However, in conventional home appliances with an information display device, it is hard to say that the display by the information display device is easy for all people to see. This is because the mounting position of the information display device in the home appliance is set to the height according to the general height of the person who is supposed to use the home appliance, and depending on the height of the viewer, it may be too low or It was because it was sometimes too high.

The present invention has been conceived in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to display information displayed on an information display device attached to various devices including home appliances by all persons having different viewpoints. It is easy to see.

[0007]

A home appliance with an information display device according to the present invention comprises a home appliance body, an information display device attached to the home appliance body, and use of the home appliance body. A user height detector for detecting the height of a user, and a movement position for determining a position of the information display device after the movement according to the height of the user detected by the user height detector. It is characterized by including a determining unit and a display device moving unit that moves the information display device to the position determined by the position determining unit.

According to the present invention, in a home appliance with an information display device, the height of the user is detected, and the information display device is moved according to the detected height.

Therefore, in a home appliance with an information display device, the information display device can display information at a height that is easy for all persons to see.

[0010] In the present invention, the user height detecting section is fixed to a predetermined position, and captures an image of the user based on incident light including light reflected by the user. A distance measuring unit that measures a distance between the photographing unit and the user, an angle detecting unit that detects an angle between an optical axis of the light incident on the photographing unit and a predetermined reference object, In the image, the specific part position detection unit that detects the position of the specific part of the user, the distance between the imaging unit and the user, the angle between the optical axis of the incident light and a predetermined reference object, Further, it is preferable to include a main detection unit that detects the position of the user based on the position of the specific part of the user in the image of the user.

In the present invention, it is preferable that the home appliance main body is a refrigerator main body.

A device for moving an information display device according to the present invention is a device for moving an information display device attached to a predetermined device, and detects a height of a user of the predetermined device. A user height detection unit, a movement position determination unit that determines a position of the information display device after the movement according to the height of the user detected by the user height detection unit, and the position determination. A display device moving unit that moves the information display device to the position determined by the unit.

According to the present invention, the height of the user of the predetermined device to which the information display device is attached is detected, and the information display device can be moved according to the detected height.

Therefore, in a predetermined device to which the information display device is attached, the information display device can display information at a height that is easy for all persons to see.

[0015]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In the present specification, a refrigerator will be described below as an example of home appliances to which the information display device is attached and a predetermined device, but the present invention is not limited to this. The present invention can be applied to the information display device whether it is attached to another home appliance or to furniture.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a refrigerator according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this refrigerator, the refrigerator body 1
The information display device 3 is attached. The refrigerator body 1
A door 2 is provided on the front surface, and a handle 2A is attached to the door 2. The information display device installation member 5 is attached to the front surface of the door 2, and the information display device 3 is attached to the front surface of the information display device installation member 5.

A camera 4 is mounted on the door 2. The camera 4 is for photographing a person who operates the refrigerator in front of the refrigerator. Camera 4
Is configured such that the photographing angle can be changed. A mechanism for changing the shooting angle of the camera 4 will be described with reference to FIG.

FIG. 2 shows the camera 4 and the camera 4
FIG. 5 is a right side view of a member for changing a shooting angle of FIG. Note that these members are attached to the refrigerator body 1 together with the camera 4, but are omitted in FIG.

The member for changing the photographing angle includes a support 21
And a pair of upper and lower metal plates 22, an adjusting unit 23, a spring 24, and a joint unit 25. A pair of metal plates 2
The lower side of 2 is attached to the upper part of the door 2.

The adjusting section 23 connects the pair of metal plates 22 and is configured to be able to adjust their horizontal distance. The camera 4 is attached to one end of the support 21. The support portion 21 has a rod shape, and the other end is attached to the joint portion 25. The support part 21 is rotatable around the other end attached to the joint part 25 as an axis.

The upper end of the spring 24 is attached to the upper surface of the pair of metal plates 22 and to the lower surface. Further, the lower end of the spring 24 abuts on the support 21 and the support 2
Pushed up by one. From this, the support portion 21
Is pressed down by a spring 24 from above and supported by a metal plate 22 from below. Thus, the position where the support portion 21 is supported, that is, the position where the camera 4 is supported and the shooting angle are determined by the horizontal distance between the pair of metal plates 22. Note that the shooting angle of the camera 4 can be defined as the angle of the axis of light that enters the lens of the camera 4 and forms an image with respect to the vertical direction.
The horizontal distance between the pair of metal plates 22 is controlled by the device movement control unit 10 (see FIG. 4) described later appropriately controlling the adjustment unit 23.

FIG. 3 is a front view of the information display device installation member 5 and a member for changing the height at which the information display device installation member 5 is installed. The member for changing the height is attached to the refrigerator main body 1 together with the information display device installation member 5, but is omitted in FIG.

The member for changing the height at which the information display device installation member 5 is installed is a motor 26 and a feed screw 2.
7 inclusive. When the motor 26 is driven,
The feed screw 27 rotates. Information display device installation member 5
Is attached to the feed screw 27 by a holding member (not shown). The holding material moves in the vertical direction when the feed screw 27 rotates. That is, when the motor 26 is driven, the information display device installation member 5 moves in the vertical direction. The driving amount of the motor 26, that is,
The vertical movement distance of the information display device installation member 5 is controlled by a device movement control unit 10 (see FIG. 4) described later.

FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram of the refrigerator of FIG. In the refrigerator, a control unit 50 for overall controlling the operation of the refrigerator, an input unit 51 such as a key for inputting information from a user of the refrigerator, and an output for outputting cold air which is an original function of the refrigerator Unit 52, a distance measuring unit 7 including an infrared sensor or the like provided near the camera 4, and measuring a distance between the camera 4 and a user; an image processing unit 9 for processing an image captured by the camera 4; Device movement control unit 10 for controlling the operation of each member of
An operation amount calculation unit 8 that calculates an operation amount of each member of the device movement control unit 10 based on information sent from the control unit 10 is included.

Next, the control unit 5 will be described with reference to FIGS.
The apparatus position adjustment processing which is executed by 0 and is the processing of the height of the information display device installation member 5 will be described. FIG.
Is a flowchart of the process, and FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an image captured by the camera 4 in the process.

First, referring to FIGS. 5 and 6, control unit 50 causes camera 4 to capture a background image in S1. The camera 4 is attached to the upper part of the refrigerator main body 1 (see FIG. 1), and is installed so as to capture an image obliquely downward. In addition, since the door 2 is opened and closed, it is considered that no object is usually placed in front of the refrigerator body 1. For this reason, the background image captured in S1 is often an image of only the floor surface as shown in FIG.

Next, in S2, it is determined whether or not the user operates the switch for instructing photographing in the input unit 51. If it is determined that such an operation has been performed, the process proceeds to S3.

In S3, the distance measuring section 7 measures the distance between the camera 4 and the user, and causes the camera 4 to capture an image of the user. As shown in FIG. 6B, the captured image includes an image of the face of a person (user) in addition to the background. The position of the person in the image differs depending on the position of the person with respect to the camera 4.

Next, in S4, the image captured in S3 is processed by the image processing section 9 so that the predetermined portion of the user in the captured image (in this embodiment, between eyes). ).

Next, in step S5, a moving distance for moving the image display device 5 to a height corresponding to the position of the eye level of the user from the position specified in step S4 and the photographing angle of the camera 4. Is calculated. The shooting angle of the camera 4 is determined by the pair of metal plates 22 at the time when the camera 4 captures the image of the user.
Is calculated based on the interval.

Then, in S6, the motor 26 is driven so as to move the image display device 5 by the distance calculated in S5, and the process ends.

In the apparatus position adjusting process described above, the background image is fetched at the beginning of the process. However, the fetching of the background image is performed when the power of the refrigerator is turned on or
It may be performed only when instructed by the user.

Next, referring mainly to FIG. 7 and FIG.
The details of the processing for specifying the position of the predetermined part of the user in 4 will be described in detail. FIG. 7 is a schematic block diagram of the image processing unit 9, and FIG. 8 is a flowchart of the subroutine of S4 in FIG. As shown in FIG. 7, the image processing unit 9 mainly includes a first processing unit 12, a second processing unit 13, and an image storage unit 14.

In the process of specifying the position of the predetermined part, the control unit 5
0, first, in S41, the difference image extraction means 121 of the first processing unit 12 inputs the image including the person captured in S3 and S1.
Then, the difference between these images is extracted by inputting the image of only the background taken in. Note that the background-only image captured in S1 is stored in the background image storage unit 141 of the image storage unit 14, and the difference image extraction unit 121 calls up the image from the background image storage unit 141 and performs processing in S41. Execute

Next, in S42, the image extracting means 122 of the first processing unit 12 is caused to extract a human image based on the difference data obtained in S41. In the present embodiment, since the image including only the background (FIG. 6A) is considered to include only the floor surface with little change in shading, the difference data based on the image including only the background is used. An image is cut out. An example of the extracted image is shown in FIG. In FIG. 6C, since only the person is cut out, the horizontal line as seen in the background of FIGS. 6A and 6B is eliminated.

Next, in S43, the image feature extracting means 131 of the second processing unit 13 causes the feature extracted from the image extracted in S42 to be extracted. In step S43, specifically, the left and right eyes are extracted from the user's face in the extracted image.

Next, in step S44, the image matching unit 132 of the second processing unit 13 stores the characteristic portion (both left and right eyes) extracted in step S43 in the person image characteristic storing unit 1 of the image storage unit 14.
42 is compared with the eye shape stored in advance.
At this time, a pattern matching method is used,
Also, as a result of the comparison and collation, when the above-mentioned “extracted image” is confirmed to be an eye image, the position of the eye,
In addition, the position of the center of both eyes in the image is specified.

In this embodiment, the shape of the eyes is stored in the person image feature storage means 142, but the present invention is not limited to this. For example, the shape of another part such as a nose may be stored. Thus, the image feature extracting unit 131 can also extract a portion other than the eyes, that is, the head of the nose (point P shown in FIG. 6D) as a feature.

In step S45, the control unit 50 determines that the center of both eyes in the "extracted image" matches the center of the image captured by the camera 4 (see FIG. 9 described later). Is calculated, and the process returns.

In the embodiment described above, first, an image of the user of the refrigerator body 1 is taken by the camera 4 attached to the upper part of the refrigerator body 1, and the distance between the camera 4 and the user is measured. Is done. Next, by appropriately processing the photographed image, the photographing angle θ of the camera 4 is calculated such that the center of the user's eye is the center of the image captured by the camera 4.

Then, the eye height of the user is calculated from the distance and the photographing angle obtained as described above. This will be specifically described with reference to FIG.

User X stands in front of door 2 of refrigerator body 1. In FIG. 9, the distance from the camera 4 to the user X is L1. The shooting angle of the camera 4 is set to θ. This photographing angle is an angle at which the center of both eyes of the user is located at the center of an image captured by the camera 4. Then, from L1 and θ, the eye height H of the user is obtained.
Is calculated. Note that H is L from the camera 4 in the vertical direction.
Assuming that L2 is located at the lower side by L2, “L2 = L1
cos θ ”.

In step S5, the difference between H obtained in this way and the height of the center of the image display device 5 in the vertical direction at that time is calculated. The moving distance is calculated.

In the above-described embodiment, the image feature extraction of S43 and S4
4 is performed. As a modified example, a method of using a feature vector by using the configuration shown in FIG. 10 can be considered.

Referring to FIG. 10, an image including a person captured by camera 4 is input to feature measuring unit 15 via natural pattern holding unit 20. The feature measuring unit 15 calculates, based on the input image, the distribution and statistics of points and local features in the region corresponding to the target object, or the geometric features (area, shape, connection degree, etc.) of the region. Is extracted. next,
All information on the features extracted by the feature measuring means 15 is input to the feature selecting means 16. Then, the feature selecting unit 16 selects a feature effective for classification for extracting the target object from the features first extracted from the pattern. Examples of the selection method include removal of extraordinary amounts of weak correlation and extraction of effective features by multivariate analysis such as principal component analysis. Then, in the classifying unit 17, based on the feature selected by the feature selecting unit 16, the pattern seen in the image captured by the camera 4 is determined in advance by the position and distribution of the vector, such as the shape of the eyes and the shape of the nose. Determine which class among the prepared classes belongs to. On the other hand, the learning means 18 calculates a parameter used for classification from a set of samples whose classes are known in advance (stored in the sample pattern storage unit 19), and calculates a parameter belonging to each class in a feature space. Find the distribution state.

According to such a technique, the image of the user as the object and the eyes of the user and the position of the center of the eyes can be extracted from the image captured by the camera 4.

A technique for identifying an image of a user from an image captured by the camera 4 is described in, for example,
An identification technology that has been put to practical use in character recognition or the like can also be used. In such a technique, a feature (condition) for identifying a person's eyes is converted into data in advance, and a portion matching the feature (condition) is extracted from the image data captured by the camera 4, By comparing the data with the data corresponding to the eye, the position of the eye in the image can be specified.

Further, in addition to the above-described identification method, a table reference method, an evaluation function method, a fuzzy inference method, a neural network method, and the like can also be used for specifying the position of an eye in an image.

The embodiments disclosed this time are to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive. The scope of the present invention is defined by the terms of the claims, rather than the description above, and is intended to include any modifications within the scope and meaning equivalent to the terms of the claims.

[0050]

According to the present invention, the height of the user of a predetermined device to which the information display device is attached is detected, and
The information display device can be moved according to the detected height.

Therefore, in a predetermined device to which the information display device is attached, the information display device can display information at a height that is easy for all persons to see.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a refrigerator according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a right side view of the camera of FIG. 1 and a member for changing a shooting angle of the camera.

FIG. 3 is a front view of the information display device of FIG. 1 and a member that changes a height at which the information display device is installed.

FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram of the refrigerator of FIG. 1;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of an apparatus position adjusting process executed in the refrigerator of FIG. 1;

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an image photographed by a camera in the apparatus position adjustment processing of the refrigerator in FIG. 1;

FIG. 7 is a schematic block diagram of an image processing unit in FIG. 4;

8 is a flowchart of a subroutine for specifying a position of a predetermined part of a user in the processing of FIG. 5;

FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining a mode in which the height of the user's eyes is calculated from the distance between the camera and the user and the shooting angle of the camera in the present embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a configuration of a modification of the configuration for specifying the position of the user's eyes in an image according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a perspective view of a refrigerator with an information display device, which is an example of a conventional home appliance with an information display device.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 refrigerator body, 2 doors, 3 information display devices, 4 cameras, 5 information display device installation members, 7 distance measurement unit,
8 operation amount calculation unit, 9 image processing unit, 10 device movement control unit, 50 control unit.

Claims (5)

[Claims] A home appliance main body; an information display device attached to the home appliance main body; a user height detecting unit detecting a height of a user of the home appliance main body; A moving position determining unit that determines a position of the information display device after the movement according to the height of the user detected by the height detecting unit; and displaying the information at a position determined by the position determining unit. A home appliance with an information display device, comprising: a display device moving unit for moving the device. 2. The imaging device according to claim 1, wherein the user height detection unit is fixed at a predetermined position, and captures an image of the user based on incident light including light reflected by the user; And a distance measurement unit that measures the distance between the user and an angle detection unit that detects an angle between an optical axis of the incident light to the imaging unit and a predetermined reference object, and in the image of the user, A specific part position detection unit that detects a position of a specific part of the user, a distance between the imaging unit and the user, an angle between an optical axis of the incident light and a predetermined reference object, and the use The home appliance with an information display device according to claim 1, further comprising: a main detection unit that detects a position of the user based on a position of a specific part of the user in an image of the user. 3. The home appliance with an information display device according to claim 1, wherein the home appliance main body is a refrigerator main body. 4. A moving device for moving an information display device attached to a predetermined device, comprising: a user height detecting unit for detecting a height of a user of the predetermined device; A movement position determining unit that determines a position of the information display device after the movement in accordance with the height of the user detected by the information detection device; and the information display device at a position determined by the position determination unit. And a display device moving unit for moving the information display device. 5. A photographing unit fixed to a predetermined position, the photographing unit photographing an image of the user based on incident light including reflected light from the user, and the photographing unit. And a distance measurement unit that measures the distance between the user and an angle detection unit that detects an angle between an optical axis of the incident light to the imaging unit and a predetermined reference object, and in the image of the user, A specific part position detection unit that detects a position of a specific part of the user, a distance between the imaging unit and the user, an angle between an optical axis of the incident light and a predetermined reference object, and the use The apparatus for moving an information display device according to claim 4, further comprising: a main detection unit that detects a position of the user based on a position of a specific part of the user in an image of the user.