Pictorial Navigation System Using Ground-Level Photos
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional navigation systems, both static and real-time, face challenges in providing effective visual information to travelers due to abstract nature of navigational information, particularly for unfamiliar destinations, as they rely on overhead satellite imagery or text/audio cues that are difficult to process in real-time, lacking detailed and relevant visual information about the location's appearance and surroundings.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that selects relevant pictorial information based on geographic location characteristics, retrieves and analyzes image data from databases with embedded tags, formats it for presentation, and associates it with the location, providing a horizontal perspective and context such as distance and direction, enabling travelers to visualize their route and destination.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If overhead satellite imagery is used to provide visual information about destinations, then the information is more relevant to actual locations than text or audio cues, but the overhead perspective and distant acquisition limit the ability to convey comprehensive, detailed visual information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from overhead satellite imagery (vertical/distant perspective) to ground-level photographs (horizontal/close perspective). This dimensional change allows the same location to be represented with much higher visual detail and relevance to what travelers actually see, while maintaining geographic coverage through systematic collection of photos at numerous locations along routes.
2Productivity
If real-time GPS tracking and dynamic direction updates are implemented, then contextual information updates are provided, but the abstract nature of navigational information requires difficult processing and translation by users
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses actual photographs taken from traveler perspectives as copies of real-world locations. These photo copies replace abstract text/audio directions and overhead satellite imagery, providing intuitive visual representations that travelers can easily process and match with their actual surroundings without requiring translation or interpretation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical cognitive process of translating and interpreting abstract navigational information with direct visual recognition. Instead of requiring users to mentally translate text cues or interpret satellite imagery, the system substitutes this complex processing with simple photo-based visual matching between the displayed image and the actual location.
3Stability of the object's composition
If static directional information is provided prior to embarkation, then route planning is established, but the information becomes difficult or inefficient to use as traveler position changes in real-time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms static pre-planned route information into a dynamic system that automatically updates based on traveler position. As GPS tracking detects movement to new locations, the system dynamically loads and displays relevant photographs for upcoming destinations, maintaining information consistency with the original route while adapting to real-time position changes without requiring manual updates.
Data Source
AI summary
Pictorial information is provided relevant to a geographic location through selecting characteristics relevant to geographic locations, searching pictorial image databases for images having an embedded tags associated with the characteristics, retrieving image files from databases having embedded tags correlated to characteristics and visually depicting a physical appearance or an attribute of a location, analyzing characteristics image files and responsively selecting preferred image data, formatting preferred image data for presentation to a traveler, associating formatted preferred data with geographic locations, and presenting associated formatted data to the traveler in association with geographic locations. Characteristics include global positioning satellite coordinates. Image data may be selected having preferred image resolutions or perspectives. Formatting pictorial information may comprise synthesizing photographs into a constructs. Associated image data may indicate a distance and direction from a geographic location. Routing system applications are enabled to present pictorial information with navigation route points.