The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 41 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover two specific inventions. The first relates to Apple's iDevice camera feature known as Panorama. The second patent relates to "lifestreaming," which is a way to log your life's activities and special moments. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Granted Patent: The Panorama Camera Feature

Apple's newly granted patent formally titled "Positional sensor-assisted motion filtering for panoramic photography" covers their invention relating to idevice camera feature known as Panorama.

The panoramic photography techniques described in Apple's patent are designed to handle a range of panoramic scenes as captured by handheld personal electronic devices. Generalized steps to carry out the panoramic photography techniques described include:

1.) Acquiring image data from the electronic device's image sensor's image stream (this may come in the form of serially captured image frames as the user pans the device across the panoramic scene);

2.) Performing "motion filtering" on the acquired image data (e.g., using information obtained from positional sensors for the handheld personal electronic device to inform the processing of the image data);

3.) Performing image registration between adjacent captured images;

4.) Performing geometric corrections on captured image data (e.g., due to perspective changes and/or camera rotation about a non-COP point); and,

5.) "Stitching" the captured images together to create the panoramic scene, i.e., blending the image data in the overlap area between adjacent captured images. Due to image projection corrections, perspective corrections, alignment, and the like, the resultant stitched panoramic image may have an irregular shape. Thus, the resultant stitched panoramic image may optionally be cropped to a rectangular shape before final storage if so desired. Each of these generalized steps will be described in greater detail below.

For more details and graphics about this invention, see our original patent report titled "Apple's Cool iPhone 5 Panorama App revealed in 5 Patents.

Apple credits Frank Doepke and Jianping Zhou as the inventors of granted patent 8,957,944 which was originally filed in Q and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Apple's patent covers 31 patent claims.

Granted Patent: Lifestyle Companion System

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to a lifestyle companion system. More particularly, the invention can relate to a system that coordinates multiple corridors of experiences in a person's life well beyond physical activities log as noted below.

The lifestyle companion system can include devices and methods for providing a platform for conducting user interviews, suggesting activities and references based on interview responses, providing a platform for a user to schedule activities, collecting data about a user during performance of activities or throughout the user's day, and/or providing progress reports.

The method also can include assigning user category levels (e.g., activity levels) based on interview responses. In some embodiments of the present invention, the lifestyle companion system can coordinate a user's fitness, nutrition, and medical experiences.

The lifestyle companion system can integrate user-selectable plug-in modules that are focused on specialized topics. For example, plug-in modules can be specialized for particular periods in a child's development, students, expectant parents, new parents, seniors, specific sports enthusiasts, food connoisseurs, geographical regions, health conditions, holidays, etc. Each module can have coordinating questionnaires, suggested activities, suggested references, instructions, logging tools, audiobooks, videos, podcasts and other types of activities or information tailored for the specialty of the module.

This kind of application may one day be a part of a life-camera system as noted in Microsoft's patent that we covered back in 2012 covering "life-streaming." Also see Wikipedia's "Lifestreaming."

For more details about this patent, see our 2012 original patent report tilted "Apple Wins Patent for Never Released Lifestyle Companion App."

Apple credits Glenn Gilley, Sarah Brody, Randall Ubillos, Mihnea Pacurariu, Jesse Dorogusker, Robert Borchers and Donald Ginsburg as the inventors of granted patent 8,956,290 which was originally filed in Q1 2007 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 5am to 7pm MST and sporadically over the weekend.