Scott T Jones and Michael A. Paolini, both of Austin, received U.S. Patent 8,146,005 for “Creating a Customized Avatar That Reflects a User's Distinguishable Attributes.”

Texas Business Patent of the Day: Does that computer character talk like you, walk like you and look like you? Yes. Two Texans invented a way for your avatar to look and act more like you.

Scott T Jones and Michael A. Paolini, both of Austin, received U.S. Patent 8,146,005 for “Creating a Customized Avatar That Reflects a User's Distinguishable Attributes.”

The two filed for the patent more than four years ago on August 7, 2007.

The patent assignee is International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, New York.

Jones and Paolini’s invention relates to the field of graphical user interfaces for computer displays, and more particularly to graphical interfaces for creating a customized avatar that reflects a user's distinguishable attributes, according to the patent document.

Computer software applications and online websites may require or allow users to interact within the application or website environment through a graphical representation of the user.

The animation of a graphical representation is used to illustrate the interaction of the user within the environment. In one example, this animated graphical representation is called an avatar. 

While an avatar is a representation of a user within a computing environment, systems for creating an avatar which reflects the actual features of a user are limited. As a result, Jones and Paolini saw a need for a method, system, and program for creating a customized avatar that more accurately reflects actual, distinguishing features of a user. 

Their invention provides a method, system, and program for determining a user's structural, external, and behavioral attributes which differ from traditional or standard user models and applying the detected differences to different avatar base models. 

In one embodiment, a capture system captures detectable attributes of a user. A differential system compares the detectable attributes with a normalized model of attributes, wherein the normalized model of attributes characterize normal representative attribute values across a sample of a plurality of users and generates differential attributes representing the differences between the detectable attributes and the normalized model of attributes.

Multiple separate avatar creator systems receive the differential attributes and each apply the differential attributes to different base avatars to create custom avatars which reflect reflects a selection of the detectable attributes of the user which are distinguishable from the normalized model of attributes. 

The capture system captures one or more of structural attributes, external attributes, and behavioral attributes. To capture structural attributes one or more scanning systems map different depths of a user. To capture external attributes one or more image capture systems capture images of a user from one or more angles and combine the images to create a three-dimensional representation of the user. To capture behavioral attributes the capture system prompts the user to respond to instructions and the capture system associates captured speech and body movement associated with the response to a behavioral attribute. 

The differential system may collect sets of a user attributes for a group of users at one point in time or over a period of time. The differential system detects at least one common attribute or range of common attributes for the group of users from the sets of user attributes. The differential system sets the common attribute or range of common attributes as the differential attributes representative of the group of users. 

A storage system may store the user attributes, differential attributes, or custom avatars for a user. At other points in time, the user may authorize the capture system, the differential system, an avatar creator system, or a particular computing environment to access the stored user attributes, differential attributes, or custom avatars.