Venue Routing Using Map Feature Relationship Constraints
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Solution Overview
Problem
Navigation applications often fail to account for the relationships between map features, leading to frustration and disorientation for users when they cannot follow the provided instructions due to inaccessible areas or inaccurate routing.
Innovation Solution
Generating navigation instructions based on defined relationships and constraints between map features, including directional, temporal, and security-based constraints, to create more accurate and contextually relevant routes within a venue.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If navigation applications provide indoor and/or venue mapping and navigation capabilities, then users can receive routing instructions within venues, but users may become frustrated or lost when the routing instructions do not account for relationships between map features that affect accessibility
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer of relationship data that mediates between the navigation system and the venue map features. This relationship data encodes accessibility constraints, directional limitations, and operational hours between map features, allowing the routing algorithm to generate reliable instructions that account for real-world navigation challenges without requiring complex modifications to the base mapping system.
2Productivity
If navigation applications generate routes based on basic map data, then routing can be computed quickly, but the routes may lead users through inaccessible areas or require impossible maneuvers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-computing and encoding relationship constraints between map features before route generation occurs. Accessibility relationships, directional constraints, and operational hours are established in advance and stored as relationship data, allowing the routing algorithm to quickly query pre-defined constraints rather than computing them in real-time, thus maintaining fast route generation while improving accuracy.
3Reliability
If venue map data includes detailed relationships and constraints between map features, then more accurate routes can be generated, but the complexity of the map data increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the complex navigation problem into distinct components: base map features, relationship data, and routing logic. By separating relationship information (accessibility, directionality, operational hours) from the core map structure and treating it as independent relationship data, the system manages complexity through modular organization while maintaining high route accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
In some implementations, a computing device can generate navigation instructions based on map data that defines the relationships between map features within a venue. For example, a relationship can define constraints that may affect the route generated between map features. The constraints can include directional constraints, time-based constraints, and/or security-based constraints on the user's ability to move between the related map features for which a relationship is defined. A relationship can define one or more intermediary map features through which a user will have to navigate in order to move between map features. The intermediary map feature(s) may have characteristics or constraints that may determine whether a user can be routed through the associated map features. The route generated by the computing device can be based on the relationship definitions generated for map features between a starting location and an ending location associated with the venue.