ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,340,489, issued on June 24, was assigned to Lenovo (United States) Inc. (Morrisville, N.C.).
"Object removal during video conferencing" was invented by John Weldon Nicholson (Cary, N.C.), Howard J. Locker (Cary, N.C.) and Daryl C Cromer (Raleigh, N.C.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A video conferencing system includes an image of a participant in a video conference and a depth map of the image. The system identifies objects in the background of the image, identifies objects in the foreground of the image, and identifies objects in the middle-ground of the image. The system removes the objects from the middle-ground, and replaces the remo...