Patent · US Active

Method and computer system for detecting crowds in a location tracking system

US9210542B2 · kind B2 · utility

5Cited by
6References
18Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateDec 9, 2013
Grant dateDec 8, 2015
Priority date
Expiry dateMar 14, 2034

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG01S5/02
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method and computer system for detecting crowds in a location tracking system utilizes a grid and the pigeonhole principle to minimize an amount of hardware, memory and/or processing capability required in the location tracking system. In particular, an amount of storage required to determine whether a location update has resulted in a crowd grows only linearly, rather than quadratically, with the number of objects being tracked because a number of active grid points will be, at most, four times the number of objects being tracked. By determining whether an individual active grid point is within a crowd area, the computational time required for detecting a crowd within this crowd area is independent from the total number of objects being tracked.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.