Audio Fingerprinting for Underground Transit Location
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional location systems, such as GPS, cellular ID, and WiFi, are ineffective in underground transportation systems due to lack of satellite or network access, making it difficult for users to determine their precise location and navigate unfamiliar areas.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses audio fingerprinting to determine location by extracting interest points from audio announcements and matching them with pre-defined audio fingerprints stored in a data store, allowing for location identification without GPS or cellular network access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If GPS, cellular ID, or WiFi based location systems are used, then location determination is accurate and reliable, but they cannot function in underground transportation systems due to lack of satellite or network access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces GPS, cellular, and WiFi-based location systems with an audio fingerprinting system that uses acoustic signals and signal processing. Instead of relying on satellite signals or network infrastructure, the system captures audio announcements through a microphone, extracts acoustic features, and matches them against a database of pre-stored audio fingerprints to determine location, thereby substituting electromagnetic/satellite-based systems with acoustic-based systems suitable for underground environments.
2Reliability
If large installations of hotspots are deployed throughout the transportation system to enable location determination, then location information becomes available, but the solution becomes costly and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables portable devices to independently determine location using built-in microphones and processing capabilities. The device captures audio announcements, extracts acoustic features, and performs matching against pre-stored fingerprints without requiring external hotspot infrastructure. This self-service approach eliminates the need for costly hotspot installations while maintaining location determination capability.
3Adaptability or versatility
If audio fingerprinting is used to determine location in underground environments, then location determination becomes possible without GPS or network access, but the system must be robust to noise and efficient with minimal storage and computational resources
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential acoustic features from audio announcements to create compact fingerprints. By identifying and extracting key interest points that uniquely characterize each announcement, the system creates condensed representations that require minimal storage space and can be quickly matched against captured audio, thereby reducing computational and storage requirements while maintaining accuracy in noisy underground environments.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for determining location based on audio fingerprinting are disclosed. An extraction component extracts a set of interest points from an audio signal associated with an audio announcement. Then a matching component determines if the extracted set of interest points matches a set of interest points representative of an audio fingerprint in a data store comprising audio fingerprints. In an aspect, the audio fingerprints in the audio fingerprint data store represent announcements for underground transportation systems. A location component further determines location information associated with the audio fingerprint based in part on the set of extracted interest points matching the set of audio interest points representative of the audio fingerprint in the data store.