GB2328335A - Building environmental television awareness system - Google Patents

Abstract

In a building 1, there is a local area network (LAN) 2 to which many client terminals 3A, 3B are attached. These client terminals are typically general purpose workstations to support the general activities of the office workers. Also attached to the LAN is a server 4 for file storage, and a controller workstation 6. Attached in turn to the controller workstation 6 is a camera 5, which is directed to view the environment of the building. The camera 5 is periodically directed by the controller to take images of the building environment. These images are then returned via the controller onto the LAN server 4, where they may be accessed from client terminals 3A, 3B using conventional browser terminals. In this manner, all office workers can maintain an awareness of their general building environment.

Description

BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS SYSTEM The present invention relates to a method and system for providing office employees and others with an improved awareness of their environment.

It is very common today to work in a large office building which is shared by many other workers. Housing staff together in such buildings is generally economically efficient for companies, and can also provide synergistic effects such as improved communications and team-working between different employees. However, there can also be negative aspects associated with such buildings. For example, in large office blocks, internal offices do not have windows, and so are deprived of natural light and ventilation. Alternatively, open plan arrangements, whilst providing all staff with at least distant views of windows, reduce individual privacy, and can inhibit concentration if interruptions or disturbances are prevalent. Thus employees in large office blocks can feel crowded, incarcerated, and/or deprived of privacy and space.

Indeed, there have been recent reports of "sick building" syndrome, in which a sizeable proportion of staff within a building suffer from some indeterminate malaise.

Such problems, which are essentially psychological in nature, can increase employee stress. This in turn may lead to reduced productivity, through factors such as greater time lost to sick leave, and reduced employee efficiency. Any potential alleviation of these problems therefore offers companies the prospect of significant cost and productivity benefits.

Accordingly, the invention provides an environmental awareness system for a building comprising: multiple general purpose terminals located within said building, said terminals each having an image display capability and being linked to a local area network; a camera directed to obtain images of the immediate environs of the building; and image storage means attached to said local area network for making available repeatedly updated images of the building environs obtained by said camera for display on said terminals.

Such a system therefore allows workers in a building to stay attuned to the environment outside the building, with the current local weather being of particular interest. This is valuable for their sense of psychological well-being, and in turn can improve worker productivity, and reduce stress-related absence. An important aspect of the present invention is that these benefits can be obtained with minimal expenditure on the part of the employer or building owner, in that the invention is implemented on top of a local area network and general purpose terminals or workstations (eg conventional personal computers), which form part of the existing computing infrastructure in most modern office buildings.

Further, in the preferred embodiment, the hypertext transport protocol (http) is used to transmit images from the storage means to the terminals, and again this protocol is supported by Internet or intranet browser software that will already be readily available on nearly all office computers. Thus in most situations the only additional requirement is a suitable camera together with appropriate control software, and these are readily available at no great expense.

It will be noted that the provision of regularly updated images per se onto the Internet is not new. For example, one well-known site in MIT had a picture of the coffee machine (perhaps to allow people to see whether or not any coffee was available). A more serious known application is a service provided by nurseries, to allow parents at work to keep an eye on the activities of their children in the nursery (see The Independent, 6 May 97, page 6). Another suggestion (made in a rather light-hearted manner, but certainly feasible from a technical point of view) is to link security cameras up to the Internet, to provide a large potential audience to monitor the output of the cameras to detect any security threats or violations (see New Scientist, 12 July 97, page 46).

Additional possible uses of cameras attached to the Internet are described in "White Paper - Network Camera Applications and Solutions", at: http://www.axis.com/products/axis~neteye~200/cam~app~sol.htm However, none of these prior art arrangements addresses or is concerned with the problem solved by the present invention, namely how to improve the psychological well-being and hence productivity of workers in a large office building, by providing them with an awareness of the environment immediately outside their building, in a simple and cost-effective manner.

In the preferred embodiment, a controller is provided, attached to the camera and to the local area network. The controller includes means for commanding the camera to take an image; means for receiving a copy of the image from the camera; and means for writing the image onto said image storage means. The controller is typically a conventional personal computer, and may also function as the image storage means if so desired.

Preferably the controller further includes means for processing the image into a predetermined compressed format, for example JPEG or GIF.

This minimises the storage space required for the image on the image storage system, as well as the time required to transport the image over the network, firstly from the controller to the storage system, and then from there to the client terminals.

In the preferred embodiment, the camera comprises an electronic digital still camera, although for example video cameras could also be used. However, using a video sequence for download to the client terminals to provide an environmental awareness system puts much more stress on the local area network in terms of bandwidth and latency.

In a preferred embodiment, at least one terminal runs an image display program which repeatedly requests an updated image of the building environs from the image storage means and displays the received updated image in a window of the terminal. Thus the user does not have to explicitly request an updated image, but this is provided automatically once the image display program is started. The image display window therefore becomes directly analogous to a conventional physical window. One convenient approach is for the image display program to comprise an applet downloaded from the image storage means, which can then be executed by the browser running at the client terminal, but alternatively the image display program might for example simply be an application installed at the client terminal.

Preferably, the image of the building environs on the image storage means is updated at an interval of between 2 and 30 minutes, with an interval of between 6 and 12 minutes being especially favoured. Such a time period minimises computer network requirements, and is long enough to deter anyone from simply looking continuously at the camera image, yet is still frequent enough to provide a psychologically valuable awareness of conditions outside the building. It will be noted that this update interval is very distinct from that used in most of the prior art scenarios described above. Further, it will be appreciated that the image update interval need not necessarily be fixed, but might vary (usually within predetermined limits), for example according to how quickly the image content is changing.

The invention further provides a method for providing office workers within a building with an awareness of the environment of the building, the method comprising the steps of: providing multiple general purpose terminals located within said building, said terminals each having an image display capability and being linked to a local area network; obtaining images of the immediate environs of the building; and making available repeatedly updated images of the building environs for access over the local area network to display on said terminals.

A preferred embodiment of the invention will now be described in detail by way of example only with reference to the following drawings: Figure 1 depicts an environmental awareness system for a building in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention; and Figure 2 is a flow chart illustrating part of the operation of environmental awareness system of Figure 1.

Figure 1 depicts a building, shown schematically as 1, which includes wiring for a local area network (LAN) 2. The LAN may be any suitable form of network, such as Ethernet, Token Ring, or otherwise, and may comprise multiple linked networks for larger buildings. Attached to the LAN are user terminals 3A, 3B, etc, which are typically conventional IBM Personal Computers. Note that building 1 may contain a heterogeneous computing environment, with a variety of user terminals; for example, some of the terminals might be so-called network computers (netstations), or the like. In the preferred embodiment, each office workplace within the building has a terminal, thereby providing LAN access to essentially all workers.

Also attached to the LAN is a server 4, which is used for data storage. In the preferred embodiment, the server supports the hypertext transfer protocol (http) used for the World Wide Web over the Internet, and terminals 3A, 3B contain client software, typically conventional Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. As is well-known, a client can use a browser to retrieve and display data from the server 4 (or any other server to which the clients have access) by specifying the location of the desired data using its universal resource locator (URL), comprising a machine (Internet) id and a directory and filename on that machine. Such browsers can display images and even video segments if these are stored at the relevant URL.

It will be appreciated that this configuration as so far described applies to most modern office buildings, where the terminals and LAN are provided to support general employee activities, such as electronic mail, word processing, accounting, Internet access, etc.

As also shown in Figure 1, the system of the present invention further includes a camera 5. This may be located outside the building 1, or inside the building, but with a good external viewpoint - this latter option may be preferable to protect the camera from inclement weather.

Camera 5 may be an electronic camera to take still images, or a video camera producing a continuous video signal, and is directed to provide an interesting outlook, which in general will be local to the building, for example the exterior of the building, some feature in the immediate environs of the building, or possibly a more panoramic view (a more distant subject could be used if particularly attractive; this would enhance the aesthetic appeal of the camera output, but lessen its effectiveness as a medium for maintaining an awareness of the environment of the building). Attached to the camera is a controller 6, which in turn is connected to the LAN, and is responsible for controlling the operations of the camera.

In a preferred embodiment, the camera 5 is a Quicktake 150 digital still camera, available from Apple Computer Inc, California, USA, which has a serial cable link to controller 6, an IBM Personal Computer running the Quicktake 1.5 software application on top of the Windows 3.1 operating system from Microsoft Corporation (cable and application software supplied with camera). This electronic still camera has 640x480 pixel resolution, and 24 bit colour, providing high image quality. The serial cable allows two way communications between the camera and the controller, and in particular allows control commands to be sent from the controller to the camera, and allows image data to be returned back from the camera to the controller.

The operation of the camera 5 and controller 6 will now be described with reference to Figure 2. Essentially this operation acts as a continuous loop, in which the first step 210 can be regarded as a control command sent from the controller to the camera over the serial cable between them. This command instructs the camera to take a picture (step 220). This picture is then returned from the camera over the serial cable to the controller (step 230), where it is processed (step 240) into a desired image format (eg JPEG, GIF, and so on). The image is then saved (step 250) from the controller 6 onto the LAN server 4 in the desired format, to a predetermined directory and filename (generally as each new image is saved, it overwrites the preceding image). Finally, the process returns to the beginning, typically after some appropriate delay (step 260). Note that the delay could be accomplished either by waiting a fixed period, or simply triggering a command to the camera (step 210) at predetermined times, for example every quarter of an hour.

Once the image has been saved onto the LAN server, it can then be accessed by terminals 3A, 3B, either by specifying its URL via an http request, or directly by opening the relevant filename on the LAN server, assuming that the terminals have direct read access to some shared disk storage on the LAN server. Both these possibilities can be performed using a standard browser.

An important consideration of the present invention is the frequency with which the image on the LAN server is updated, which of course will typically match the rate at which the camera takes images.

In general the frequency of image update should be great enough to capture most meteorological activity, for example, showers, thunderstorms, sunny spells, and so on, suggesting an interval between updates of no more than say 30 minutes. On the other hand, there are disadvantages in too short an update interval. For example, updating the image every couple of seconds (most current digital cameras have an inbuilt picture delay of this magnitude, although this is likely to decrease as technology progresses) increases the burden on LAN 2, and LAN server 4. Moreover, the intent is not to encourage employees to continuously watch the output of the camera, since this would distract them from their work.

Thus an update frequency of say between 2 and 30 minutes will generally be most suitable, to provide employees with the psychological benefit of meaningful awareness of the environment outside their building, but without impacting the performance either of these employees or of the office computing systems and infrastructure. Particularly preferred is an update interval in the range from 6 to 12 minutes, which corresponds roughly to the time a person may focus unbroken concentration onto a single work item, before requiring some form of mental relief, even if only very briefly. Furthermore, such an update interval is long enough to prevent anyone simply sitting around waiting for each new image to be produced, without performing any intervening work.

It will be noted that the basic software used at the client terminals 3A, 3B, etc is standard - ie a conventional Web browser. This ensures that the environmental awareness system will be accessible to essentially all workers in the building, since they will already be familiar with the operation of such browsers from their normal business activity. In other words, there is no need for such users to install and/or learn some new software package to benefit from the invention, but rather all they need to be provided with is the URL of the stored images (which can easily be added as a bookmark or the like to their browser for quick access in the future).

As an enhancement to the above embodiment, the LAN server is provided with an applet (a small piece of software, typically in the Java programming language), which is then downloaded by the client terminals 3A, 3B using their browsers in standard fashion using the http protocol.

The applet has its own window, and effectively runs under the browser (such Java-enabled browsers are well-known in the art, and again will generally be installed as standard on the client terminals). The function of this applet is simply to periodically access the stored image produced by the camera, and display it in the applet window; clearly the download interval of the applet should correspond if possible at least approximately with the update period of the image from the camera. Thus once the user at terminal 3A or 3B has initially accessed the applet, they do not need to take any further action to obtain an updated sequence of images in the window. This provides an even more naturalistic paradigm for the user, since they can now glance at their on-screen window in equivalent fashion to glancing out of a conventional window.

The skilled person will realise that many variations are possible on the embodiments described above. For example, the images may be made directly available from the controller, rather than being copied onto the server (ie the controller could act itself as a server for image access requests from the clients). Alternatively, it is possible to obtain combined electronic cameras/Web servers, such as the NetEye 200 Network Camera from Axis Communications AB in Sweden, in which case one device may perform the combined functions of camera 5, controller 6, and LAN server 4. Also, rather than using a Java applet to provide an updated sequence of images in the window, this could be implemented instead with any suitable application residing at the client terminals.

Another possibility is for the camera outlook to vary with time, with perhaps the camera panning across the scene outside the building.

This could be achieved by having a special mount, also under the control of controller 4. Such camera movements could be programmed to follow a predetermined path on a daily routine, or perhaps have some random element in the sequence of shots (providing that the limits of such random variations were properly constrained - it would not be generally desirable to have large numbers of picture directed solely at the sky).

There may also be multiple cameras, possibly operated in rota fashion, or perhaps each storing their own respective image for access. Further, the interval of image update need not be constant, but might vary somewhat.

For example, the camera might be commanded to take relatively frequent images, but with the controller only writing a new image to the server if the new image differs by more than a predetermined amount from an earlier image (typically the preceding image).

Also, whilst the preferred embodiment has been described primarily with reference to the use of a digital still camera to capture pictures of the environment outside the building, it would also be possible to use a video camera. Typically this would then be attached to a controller, again an IBM Personal Computer, via a video adapter card. There are a variety of possible operational modes with such a video camera; one scheme would be to operate the video camera continuously, but for the controller to only extract and save small video excerpts on a periodic basis onto the LAN server, for example in MPEG format. There are a couple of drawbacks however with the use of video segments to provide environmental awareness. In particular, the required bandwidth to transmit such segments to the LAN server, and from there to the client terminals, is much greater than for still images, and also many office terminals may not be provided with a video display facility (or only a relatively poor facility).

Of course, it is possible for the controller to extract still images from a video sequence, but in general the use of a specific electronic still camera as described above in the preferred embodiment would be cheaper and provide superior image quality compared with such an approach.

In addition, although the description has focused on the benefits of an environmental awareness system for office workers within a building, the invention is also applicable to other situations where people may suffer a feeling of detachment from the outside world, for example in a hospital (providing of course the patients have access to suitable terminals, although one can foresee the increasing provision of suitable Internet access from hospital bedrooms).

Claims (10)

1. An environmental awareness system for a building (1) comprising: multiple general purpose terminals (3A, 3B) located within said building, said terminals each having an image display capability and being linked to a local area network (2); a camera (5) directed to obtain images of the immediate environs of the building; and image storage means (4) attached to said local area network for making available repeatedly updated images of the building environs obtained by said camera for display on said terminals.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the terminals access images from the image storage means using the hypertext transport protocol (http).

3. The system of claim 1 or 2, further comprising a controller (6) attached to the camera and to the local area network, said controller including: means for commanding the camera to take an image; means for receiving a copy of the image from the camera; and means for writing the image onto said image storage means.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said controller further includes means for processing the image into a predetermined compressed format.

5. The system of any preceding claim, wherein said camera comprises an electronic digital still camera.

6. The system of any preceding claim, wherein at least one terminal runs an image display program which repeatedly requests an updated image of the building environs from the image storage means and displays the received updated image in a window of the terminal.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein said image display program comprises an applet downloaded from the image storage means.

8. The system of any preceding claim, wherein the image of the building environs on the image storage means is updated at an interval of between 2 and 30 minutes.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the image of the building environs on the image storage means is updated at an interval of between 6 and 12 minutes.

10. A method for providing office workers within a building (1) with an awareness of the environment of the building, the method comprising the steps of: providing multiple general purpose terminals (3A, 3B) located within said building, said terminals each having an image display capability and being linked to a local area network (2); obtaining images of the immediate environs of the building; and making available repeatedly updated images of the building environs for access over the local area network to display on said terminals.