Saturday, September 16, 2017

Oh, patents! AR output security

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann


Franziska Roesner spends her time thinking about “What could a buggy or malicious application do?” She is a computer security and privacy expert, and inventor, co-running the Security and Privacy Research Laboratory at the University of Washington, specializing in Augmented Reality (AR). In particular, she has focused on AR output security, that is, the sorts of buggy and malicious actions that could be performed by an AR application receiving multiple sources of information from the real world. 

For example, Roesner cites the case of an AR windshield application receiving real-world information on road signs, lane configurations, and the presence or absence of pedestrians. The potential AR output security risks she is addressing are those of a buggy or malicious AR program which might obscure potential warnings, provide misleading road sign information, or hide incoming information from the real world. 

In the patent Figure 2 drawing enclosed, the AR-enabled windshield shows the sort of buggy information that could appear to obstruct real-world information.

The system invented to mitigate AR output security risks is disclosed in the US patent Application US2017162177 titled Methods and systems for providing presentation security for augmented reality applications. The Abstract of this invention is included below with the patent Figure 2, mentioned above, illustrating potential AR Output Security risks.
In some embodiments, an augmented reality system is provided that provides output security. In some embodiments, an operating system of the augmented reality system provides trusted management support for presenting virtual objects from untrusted applications executing in multiple isolated processes. With the output security mechanisms enabled, untrusted applications are still provided significant flexibility to create immersive AR experiences, but their presented content is constrained by the augmented reality system based on one or more output policies that are intended to reduce intrusiveness of virtual object presentations. Output policies may be composable, such that more than one output policy may be enforced on a given virtual object in a way that reduces intrusiveness of the presentation of the virtual object.
Several additional Microsoft and University of Texas patents, awarded to Roesner in collaboration, are connected to this invention.The list of these patents is appended below:
  • US2016359862 (A1) ― 2016-12-08 - System and method for using per-application profiles in a computing device 
  • MX2016002841 (A) ― 2016-06-17 - World-driven access control.
  • CN105637522 (A) ― 2016-06-01 - World-driven access control using trusted certificates 
  • CN105579946 (A) ― 2016-05-11 - Managing shared state information produced by applications 
  • US2015071555 (A1) ― 2015-03-12 - Managing Access by Applications to Perceptual Information
  • US2013205385 (A1) ― 2013-08-08 - Providing intent-based access to user-owned resources
  • US2013117840 (A1) ― 2013-05-09 - User-driven access control
  • WO2010147857 (A2) ― 2010-12-23 - Dependence prediction in a memory system
  • WO2009006595 (A1) ― 2009-01-08 - Unordered load/store queue 
References
Franziska Roesner
Security and Privacy Research Laboratory
UW Professor Franziska Roesner named one of the world's top innovators under 35

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