IP Library Granted Patent US 12,243,163
Granted Patent B2
US 12,243,163 · App. 18/441,974 · Granted Mar 4, 2025

Systems and methods for pitch determination

Inventors: William Castillo (Belmont, CA); Giridhar Murali (San Francisco, CA); Brandon Scott (New York, NY); Kai Jia (San Francisco, CA); Jeffrey Sommers (Mountain View, CA); Dario Rethage (Kendall Park, NJ)
Assignee: Hover Inc.
G06T17/00G06N3/08G06T7/10G06T7/70G06T2207/20084G06T2207/20092
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,243,163
App. No.
18/441,974
Granted
Mar 4, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for pitch determination. An example method includes obtaining an image depicting a structure, the image being captured via a user device positioned proximate to the structure. The image is segmented to identify, at least, a roof facet of the structure. An eave vector and a rake vector which are associated with the roof facet are determined. A normal vector of the roof facet is calculated based on the eave vector and the rake vector, and compared to a vector indicating a vertical direction such as gravity. The angle made out by the normal and a gravity vector may be utilized to calculate the pitch of the roof facet.

Claims (28)

1. A method implemented by a system of one or more computers, the method comprising:

providing access to an image depicting a structure, the image being captured via a user device positioned proximate to the structure, the structure having a plurality of planar elements comprising at least a roof facet and one or more walls;

providing the image as input to a neural network, wherein the neural network outputs, at least, a surface normal associated with the roof facet and a surface normal associated with a particular wall of the one or more walls;

adjusting each surface normal based on a transform, wherein the transform adjusts at least the surface normal associated with the particular wall to be substantially orthogonal to a vertical orientation; and

extracting a pitch of the roof facet based on the adjusted surface normal associated with the roof facet and a gravity vector.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the neural network comprises a convolutional neural network trained to segment the planar elements into at least the roof facet or the wall.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the neural network further comprises one or more fully-connected layers which receive output from the convolutional neural network, and wherein the fully-connected layers are trained to output individual surface normals associated with individual planar elements.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the image was captured below a height of the structure.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining a plurality of surface normals corresponding to a plurality of roof facets.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the gravity vector is a unit vector oriented along the vertical orientation.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining the gravity vector based on a feature associated with the particular wall.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more walls include a plurality of walls, and wherein the neural network outputs a surface normal associated with each of the walls.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the transform adjusts the surface normal associated with each of the walls to be substantially orthogonal to vertical.

10. The method of claim 8 , wherein the transform adjusts individual surface normals associated with a subset of the walls to be substantially orthogonal to vertical.

11. A system comprising one or more processors and non-transitory computer readable media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

provide access to an image depicting a structure, the image being captured via a user device positioned proximate to the structure, the structure having a plurality of planar elements comprising at least a roof facet and one or more walls;

provide the image as input to a neural network, wherein the neural network outputs, at least, a surface normal associated with the roof facet and a surface normal associated with a particular wall of the one or more walls;

adjust each surface normal based on a transform, wherein the transform adjusts at least the surface normal associated with the particular wall to be substantially orthogonal to a vertical orientation; and

extracting a pitch of the roof facet based on the adjusted surface normal associated with the roof facet and a gravity vector.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the neural network comprises a convolutional neural network trained to segment the planar elements into at least the roof facet or the wall.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the neural network further comprises one or more fully-connected layers which receive output from the convolutional neural network, and wherein the fully-connected layers are trained to output individual surface normals associated with individual planar elements.

14. The system of claim 11 , wherein the image was captured below a height of the structure.

15. The system of claim 11 , wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to determine a plurality of surface normals corresponding to a plurality of roof facets.

16. The system of claim 11 , wherein the gravity vector is a unit vector oriented along the vertical orientation.

17. The system of claim 11 , wherein the gravity vector is based on a feature associated with the particular wall.

18. The system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more walls include a plurality of walls, and wherein the neural network outputs a surface normal associated with each of the walls.

19. The system of claim 18 , wherein the transform adjusts the surface normal associated with each of the walls to be substantially orthogonal to vertical.

20. The system of claim 18 , wherein the transform adjusts individual surface normals associated with a subset of the walls to be substantially orthogonal to vertical.

Assignments (2)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Mar 15, 2025
From: RETHAGE, DARIO
To: HOVER INC.
Reel/Frame 070523/0473 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Jan 31, 2025
From: CASTILLO, WILLIAM; MURALI, GIRIDHAR; SCOTT, BRANDON; JIA, KAI; SOMMERS, JEFFREY
To: HOVER INC.
Reel/Frame 070081/0478 →
Continuity (4)
Continuation 18505997 · Nov 9, 2023
Division 17445939 · Aug 25, 2021
Provisional Application 63070816 · Aug 26, 2020
Related Publication 20240257452A1 · Aug 1, 2024
References Cited (19)
US 8422825B1 · Neophytou et al. · 2013 [cited by applicant]
US 8610708B2 · Richards · 2013 [cited by applicant]
US 9437033B2 · Sun et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 11004259B2 · Hu et al. · 2021 [cited by applicant]
US 20160284075A1 · Phan et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 20190080467A1 · Hirzer · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190088032A1 · Milbert · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190279420A1 · Moreno · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190371057A1 · Upendran · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190385363A1 · Porter · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20200057824A1 · Yeh · 2020 [cited by examiner]
US 20210279811A1 · Waltman · 2021 [cited by examiner]
US 20230215087A1 · Castillo et al. · 2023 [cited by applicant]
WO WO2021041719A1 · 2021 [cited by applicant]
U.S. Appl. No. 62/893,100, filed Aug. 28, 2019, Jia et al. [cited by applicant]
U.S. Appl. No. 62/983,324, filed Feb. 28, 2020, Shree. [cited by applicant]
U.S. Appl. No. 63/140,716, filed Jan. 22, 2021, Rethage et al. [cited by applicant]
Kushal, et al., Single View Reconstruction of Piecewise Swept Surfaces, International Conference on 3D Vision, 8 pages, Jun. 29, 2013. [cited by applicant]
Wang et al., “Designing Deep Networks for Surface Normal Estimation,” Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2015, pp. 539-547. [cited by applicant]