Patent & Technical Disclosure Notice

This FAQ provides high-level, conceptual explanations of the Phocoustic™ platform and its physics-anchored reasoning framework. All specific algorithms, data structures, gating mechanisms, and related modules are defined exclusively in Phocoustic’s U.S. and international patent filings. Nothing on this page should be interpreted as revealing internal implementation, limiting patent claim scope, or offering technical enablement.

Frequently Asked Questions

SECTION 1 — Core Concepts

1.1 What is Phocoustic?

Phocoustic Inc.’s public demonstration portal for technologies that combine physics-anchored sensing, structured drift interpretation, and early-stage cognitive frameworks. The system focuses on how scenes change over time rather than relying solely on single images, providing insight into stability, behavior, and emerging anomalies.

1.2 What does “physics-anchored” mean?

“Physics-anchored” refers to reasoning methods that incorporate physical constraints, consistency checks, and stability expectations when assessing change. Rather than depending primarily on learned visual correlations, the system evaluates whether observed behavior is compatible with known physical characteristics of the environment, materials, and motion.

1.3 How does this differ from traditional AI-based inspection?

Conventional AI systems often emphasize pattern recognition and require training data to classify examples. In contrast, the Phocoustic framework emphasizes change dynamics, physical consistency, and structured drift interpretation. This allows the system to highlight behaviors of interest even when no defect examples exist in advance. The specifics of how this is accomplished are defined in the corresponding patent filings.

SECTION 2 — Drift, Stability, and Detection

2.1 What is “semantic drift”?

Semantic drift is a structured representation of meaningful change across sequential frames. It refers to change that is coherent, interpretable, and physically plausible under the conditions being observed. Drift that aligns with these characteristics may indicate early-stage instability or emerging anomalies.

2.2 What types of change are typically excluded?

The Phocoustic framework conceptually filters out changes that are unlikely to reflect meaningful physical behavior, such as random sensor noise, exposure fluctuations, or motion inconsistent with object structure. The mechanisms for doing so are described at the patent level, not on this page.

2.3 How early can drift-based methods detect issues?

Drift interpretation can highlight subtle instability patterns—such as localized stress, reflectance irregularities, or micro-motion—before they evolve into visible defects. Timelines vary by application, but early-stage detection is a primary design goal of the architecture.

2.4 How is drift visualized?

Visualizers may include color-fused overlays, directional cues, or magnified regions to help operators understand where change is occurring. These are illustrative tools only; the internal algorithms that produce quantified drift information remain part of the patent record.

SECTION 3 — System Architecture

3.1 What are the main modules?

The Phocoustic platform includes multiple conceptual layers, such as:

These descriptions are conceptual only; specific logic and interactions between modules are covered in the filings.

3.2 How does the end-to-end pipeline operate?

At a high level, the system captures imagery, interprets drift, organizes structured directional and semantic cues, and applies cognitive governance to determine which interpretations should be surfaced. Detailed operational sequences are intentionally omitted here for patent-protection reasons.

SECTION 4 — Practical Applications

4.1 Semiconductor wafer inspection

Drift analysis can reveal subtle indicators of instability, non-uniformity, or early-stage mechanical or optical irregularities. The system is designed for generalization rather than dependence on predefined defect libraries.

4.2 PCB, solder, and connector inspection

The framework can surface patterns associated with stress, fatigue, warpage, or micro-movement. Each component type can exhibit unique drift signatures, enabling targeted evaluation.

4.3 Moving conveyor systems

By focusing on consistent physical motion rather than appearance alone, the system can highlight irregular object movement, vibration inconsistencies, or emerging misalignments.

4.4 Low-visibility driving

In visibility-degraded conditions, drift interpretation may reveal navigational cues, unstable objects, or reflectance anomalies. XVADA applies the Phocoustic approach to mobility and perception scenarios.

SECTION 5 — Artificial Cognitive Intelligence

5.1 What is Artificial Cognitive Intelligence?

Artificial Cognitive Intelligence is a physics-informed computational framework for evaluating evidence, organizing meaning, and applying structured rules so that semantic interpretation is limited to well-supported conclusions. It is not intended to emulate human consciousness or biology. Instead, it is a classical, rule-governed computational model defined and protected within the patent filings.


5.2 What role does the semantic organization layer play?

The semantic organization layer conceptually manages relationships among observed change behavior, object context, temporal history, and emerging meaning. It provides a structured way to relate how physical change evolves over time to higher-level interpretation. The specific mechanisms by which these relationships are formed and maintained are proprietary and protected by patent.


5.3 What does the contextual conditioning layer contribute?

The contextual conditioning layer governs when semantic activation is permitted. It ensures that interpretations are driven by stable, physically consistent evidence rather than weak, ambiguous, or environmentally inconsistent signals. This layer helps suppress spurious activations and moderates interpretation based on context and persistence.


5.4 Does Artificial Cognitive Intelligence require neural networks?

Neural components may be incorporated where they provide value, but the overall framework does not depend on them. Much of the cognitive organization relies on physics-guided evidence evaluation and rule-constrained processing rather than purely data-driven learning models.

SECTION 6 — Safety, Stability, and Reliability

6.1 How does the system avoid unsupported interpretations?

The architecture employs multi-layer consistency checks, contextual gating, and physical plausibility assessments. These measures help ensure that only well-supported interpretations progress through the reasoning stack. Full mechanisms are disclosed in the patent documents, not on this page.

6.2 How are anomalies validated?

Validation generally involves evaluating persistence, structure, direction, context, and temporal behavior. The detailed scoring and gating logic remain proprietary.

6.3 Can the system be audited?

Yes. The framework is designed so that data processing stages produce interpretable artifacts that support analysis, governance, and traceability.

SECTION 7 — Intellectual Property

7.1 What parts of the system are patented?

Public filings cover physics-anchored drift extraction, structured drift representation, semantic alignment, and cognitive governance layers. The authoritative definition of each invention appears only in the corresponding USPTO/WIPO documents.

7.2 Does this FAQ define claim scope?

No. This FAQ is explanatory only. Claim scope, variations, and enforceable rights are determined solely by the published patent documents and their legal prosecution history.

SECTION 8 — Integration & Deployment

8.1 Does the system require a GPU?

Not necessarily. Many components operate efficiently on CPUs or embedded hardware, though high-throughput environments may benefit from GPUs.

8.2 How is the system calibrated?

Drift-based methods typically require modest setup, such as establishing a stable baseline or defining optional regions of interest. Details vary by application.

8.3 Can the system integrate with third-party sensors?

Yes. The Phocoustic framework is designed to interface with a wide range of camera systems, inspection platforms, and mobility sensors, depending on deployment requirements.