Geographic State Indication via Mobile Sensor Aggregation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current mobile communication devices lack an efficient method to aggregate and analyze sensor data from multiple locations to provide comprehensive insights into geographic areas, limiting their ability to accurately indicate environmental conditions and user experiences.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising an analytics manager that aggregates and processes sensor data from multiple mobile devices to determine geographic states, utilizing GPS, accelerometers, microphones, and other sensors to derive analytical information and provide users with real-time and historical insights into environmental conditions and crowd dynamics.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If sensor data is collected from multiple mobile devices at multiple locations, then the comprehensiveness of geographic area insights is improved, but the complexity of data aggregation and processing increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a server as an intermediary component that receives sensor data from multiple mobile devices, performs centralized aggregation and processing, and generates geographic area insights. This intermediary architecture allows comprehensive data collection from distributed devices while offloading the complex processing tasks to the server, thus resolving the contradiction between information comprehensiveness and processing complexity.
2Loss of time
If real-time sensor measurements are processed to provide timely indications of geographic states, then the responsiveness to user needs is improved, but the computational resources and processing time required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary data aggregation and processing on the server before users request specific geographic state information. By pre-processing sensor data from multiple devices and maintaining updated geographic area states on the server, the system can quickly respond to user queries without performing intensive real-time computations on mobile devices, thus reducing energy consumption while maintaining timeliness.
3Measurement precision
If multiple types of sensors (accelerometers, microphones, GPS receivers) are utilized to enhance device usability, then the quality of environmental data collection is improved, but the device complexity and power consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent leverages the existing multi-functional sensor suite in modern mobile devices (accelerometers, microphones, GPS receivers, light sensors) to collect diverse environmental data. By designing a universal data collection framework that accommodates multiple sensor types and integrates their outputs into comprehensive geographic state assessments, the system maximizes the utility of existing device capabilities without requiring additional specialized hardware, thus improving measurement precision while controlling device complexity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables users to receive accurate and timely indications of geographic states, such as noise levels, crowd density, and activity types, enhancing user experience and decision-making through visual representations like heat maps and histograms.
Implementation Method 1
A GPS receiver uses data from Global Positioning System satellites to determine a position of the device
Implementation Method 2
A magnetometer determines an orientation of the device relative to the earth's magnetic field
Implementation Method 3
Changes in the orientation of the device can be determined based on detection by a gyroscope of angular rate of the device
Implementation Method 4
An accelerometer measures acceleration a device may experience, for example sensing shock or vibration
Implementation Method 5
A proximity sensor can for example generate an electromagnetic field and detect changes in the field to determine how close the device is to a person or object
Data Source
AI summary
A method and corresponding system for providing an indication of one or more states of a geographic area. The method includes acquiring sensor data including sensor measurements taken by a plurality of mobile devices at a plurality of locations and acquiring location data corresponding to the plurality of locations of the sensor measurements. At least one processor determines one or more states of a geographic area corresponding to the plurality of locations based on the sensor data, and an indication is provided of the one or more states of the geographic area to a particular user.