TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to optical articles. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to optical articles that are configured to be readable and or noticed by both optical systems and human observers and systems including such optical articles.

BACKGROUND

Optical systems include methods for acquiring, analyzing, and understanding images. Illustrative applications of these systems include robotics, face recognition, image search, machine vision, remote sensing, surveillance, autonomous vehicles, and object detection to name a few. Some examples of applications of object detection include vehicle vision systems, autonomous vehicles, as well as worker safety.

In recent years, computer vision systems have taken numerous approaches to detecting objects of interest, like pedestrians. Most approaches to object detection include visible or near infrared cameras. The problem of object detection is complicated due to the complexity and variety of the environments in which the optical articles and systems can be located in (e.g., daytime or nighttime; sunny or cloudy; urban or city; construction, etc.), the variety of the poses that they can take, and the variety of their appearance based on size, clothing, etc., as well as due to potential partial occlusion.

Many of the pedestrian detection approaches employ exhaustive scanning over the entire image, or template based silhouette matching, body part matching. However, due to variety in the forms that humans can take in images, these approaches are very difficult, time consuming, and have less than ideal performance.

Similarly, the difficult task of detecting and identifying pedestrians at night by human observers led to introduction and regulation of high visibility garments. High visibility garments (i.e., garments with retro-reflective materials) are designed to make the wearer more visible or conspicuous by returning more of the incident light back to the light source and in patterns that can be readily recognized by human viewers as other human forms. Current optical systems are based on collecting a large amount of training data, having human experts annotate it and then training a model to detect the specific object of interest. This collection and annotation of data is time consuming and cost prohibitive.

Even in view of existing technology related to optical articles, there remains opportunity for improved optical articles and substrates, such as infrastructure, wearables, vehicles, and other articles, containing such optical articles.

SUMMARY

The present disclosure provides a number of advantages over existing optical articles and systems used therewith. The present disclosure provides optical articles that can be readily observed and/or convey information under any conditions to a machine observer, a human observer, or both, to allow identification and tracking of such optical articles on users or objects.

The present disclosure provides an optical article comprising a data rich plurality of retroreflective elements that are configured in a spatially defined arrangement, wherein the plurality of retroreflective elements comprise retroreflective elements having at least two different retroreflective properties and at least two different optical contrasts, wherein data rich means information that is readily machine interpretable. In some instances, the data rich plurality of retroreflective elements are configured in a repeating spatially defined arrangement such that the information is interpretable even when the portion of the retroreflective elements are occluded.

In some instances, the at least two different retroreflective properties are at least two different retroreflective intensity values. In some instances, the at least two different retroreflective properties are at least two different wavelengths. In some instances, the at least two different retroreflective properties have at least two different polarization states. In some instances, the at least two different retroreflective properties have at least two different phase retardations.

In some instances, the spatially defined arrangement comprises geometric arrangement in which the retroreflective elements are positioned with a distance from their neighboring retroreflective elements, and wherein the retroreflective elements have a periodicity from one element to another within the spatially defined arrangement. In some instances, the periodicity is a regular periodicity. In some instances, the periodicity is an irregular periodicity. In some instances, the spatially defined arrangement is rotationally insensitive.

In some instances, a number of geometric arrangements are required per spatially defined arrangement depends on a required quality of fit. In some instances, the retroreflective elements are positioned from their nearest neighboring retroreflective elements by a characteristic distance. In some instances, the retroreflective elements have a characteristic ratio of size to distance to neighboring retroreflective elements that is invariant with viewing angle.

The present disclosure provides a fabric comprising the aforementioned articles.

The present disclosure also includes a system comprising any of the aforementioned articles, an optical system, and an inference engine for interpreting and classifying the plurality of retroreflective elements wherein the optical system feeds data to the inference engine. In some instances, the article is disposed on at least one of infrastructure, targets, wearables, and vehicles.

In some instances, the optical system is part of a vehicle, and further wherein the vehicle uses the information as an input to an autonomous driving module. In some instances, the vehicle uses the information to provide human language feedback to the driver. In some instances, the vehicle uses the information to provide at least one of haptic, audible or visual feedback to the driver.

In some instances, the data rich plurality of retroreflective elements is observable or visible in the infrared spectrum with a computer vision system, in the visible spectrum with the human eye, or visible with both. In some instances, the information related to the data rich plurality of retroreflective articles comprises at least one of road workers expected, pedestrians expected, construction workers expected, students expected, emergency responder workers expected.

In some instances, the inference engine is locally stored as a component of the optical system. In some instances, the optical system communicates with the inference engine using a wireless communication protocol. In some instances the inference engine includes a look up table with assigned meanings associated with specific patterns of data rich plurality of retroreflective elements. In some instances, the inference engine includes a look up table.

The above summary is not intended to describe each embodiment of the present disclosure. The details of one or more embodiments of the present disclosure are also set forth in the description below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the present disclosure will be apparent from the description and from the claims.

