User-Defined Private Maps for Indoor-Outdoor Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional GPS navigation devices are ineffective in indoor locations and lack the ability to facilitate efficient communication among multiple users regarding their locations, relying on inefficient phone calls or text messages for group coordination.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for presenting user-defined private maps over the Internet, allowing users to import public maps, create private maps, and link them through icons, enabling efficient communication and location tracking within groups using mobile devices with GPS capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional GPS navigation devices are used, then outdoor navigation is effective, but indoor location tracking fails
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the mapping functionality into public maps (outdoor, GPS-reliant) and private maps (indoor, manually created). This segmentation allows each map type to be optimized for its specific environment, with public maps providing outdoor navigation and private maps filling the indoor gap where GPS is unavailable.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces map icons as intermediary elements that link public and private maps. These icons serve as connection points between the GPS-based public map system and the manual private map system, allowing seamless transition between outdoor and indoor navigation contexts.
2Loss of information
If phone calls are used for group communication, then real-time communication is achieved, but time efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of verbal communication, the system creates visual copies of location information through map icons representing each group member on the map. This visual representation replaces the need for continuous verbal updates, allowing all members to see each other's locations at a glance without time-consuming phone calls.
3Productivity
If text messages are used for location sharing, then one-to-many communication is achieved, but location precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses visual icons with potential color coding or visual differentiation to represent different group members and their locations on the map. This visual approach provides precise location information that text descriptions cannot convey, allowing members to accurately determine each other's positions without relying on imprecise verbal or text-based directional instructions.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, device, and system for presenting one or more user-defined private maps with a public map for sharing among a group of users are disclosed. The device includes a processor for executing computer programs, a memory for storing data, an input module for entering user commands, a communication module for transmitting and receiving data, and a display for showing information on a screen. The device further includes logic for importing a public map representing a publicly available mapping of an area or a location, logic for creating one or more user-defined private maps, logic for linking the one or more user-defined private maps to the public map through a set of corresponding map icons, and logic for displaying the public map and the one or more user-defined private maps.