Collaborative creation of indoor maps

US11199412B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• TRX SYSTEMS, INC. · US

Inventors

• Kamiar Kordari · McLean, US
• Benjamin Funk · Hanover, US
• Carole Teolis · Glenn Dale, US
• Jared Napora · Manchester, US
• John Karvounis · Bowie, US
• Dan Hakim · Silver Spring, US
• Christopher Giles · Frederick, US
• Carol Ann Politi · Bethesda, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 28, 2018
• Grant date: Dec 14, 2021
• Expiry date: Mar 9, 2039

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01C21/383
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

This disclosure provides techniques for the creation of maps of indoor spaces. In these techniques, an individual or a team with no mapping or cartography expertise can contribute to the creation of maps of buildings, campuses or cities. An indoor location system can track the location of contributors in the building. As they walk through indoor spaces, an application may automatically create a map based on data from motion sensors by both tracking the location of the contributors and also inferring building features such as hallways, stairways, and elevators based on the tracked contributors' motions as they move through a structure. With these techniques, the process of mapping buildings can be crowd sourced to a large number of contributors, making the indoor mapping process efficient and easy to scale up.