Visual Route Book Data Sets for Carrier Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing delivery route instructions for carriers are often complex and difficult to understand due to hard-to-find locations and intricate routes, especially when relying on textual descriptions that lack visual cues, leading to potential errors and confusion.
Innovation Solution
A system that automatically analyzes route images for visual saliency and stores them with associated information, creating a visual route book data set to provide carriers with a visual summary of delivery routes, using images and metadata to guide navigation through complex routes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If textual descriptions are used for delivery route instructions, then the instructions can be provided in a simple format, but the instructions become complex and difficult to understand due to hard-to-find locations and intricate routes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from one-dimensional textual descriptions to two-dimensional visual images. By providing visual route images that show actual street views, landmarks, and location contexts, carriers can visually comprehend complex routes without parsing complicated textual instructions. This dimensional shift resolves the contradiction by maintaining format simplicity while dramatically improving navigation ease.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses visual copying of the actual delivery location environment through photographs and images. These visual copies capture real-world features such as building appearances, street signs, and landmark objects, allowing carriers to mentally map the visual information to physical locations. This copying approach simplifies the instruction format while making route navigation intuitive and error-resistant.
2Measurement precision
If detailed textual instructions are provided for complex routes, then navigation accuracy may improve, but the instructions become harder to understand and more time-consuming to process
Solution Approach 1:
The patent provides visual images at key decision points and landmarks along the route rather than continuous imagery throughout the entire journey. This partial action approach focuses visual information where it is most needed for navigation accuracy, while avoiding the time loss associated with processing excessive visual data. Carriers receive targeted visual cues that maintain delivery accuracy without overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-processes and prepares visual route images before carriers begin their deliveries. By having images ready in advance and organizing them by sequence and location, the system eliminates the time carriers would spend capturing and analyzing images during active delivery. This preliminary preparation maintains high delivery location accuracy while minimizing the time carriers spend processing instructions.
3Ease of operation
If visual route images are collected and stored for all delivery locations, then navigation assistance improves, but the data storage requirements and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and stores only the essential visual elements needed for navigation rather than archiving complete high-resolution image sets. By identifying and retaining key features such as landmark objects, distinctive building characteristics, and critical route markers within the images, the system maintains high route guidance quality while significantly reducing data storage requirements through selective feature extraction.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies different image quality and detail levels to different locations along the delivery route based on their navigational importance. Critical decision points and hard-to-find locations receive higher-resolution images with more detailed features, while straightforward route segments use lower-resolution images. This local quality approach optimizes route guidance quality where needed while minimizing overall data storage volume.
Data Source
AI summary
Route images that have been acquired along delivery routes may be automatically analyzed for visual saliency (e.g., based on image motion, image content, sensor information, carrier actions, etc.) and stored along with related route information as part of a visual route book data set. The route images may be acquired by carriers utilizing mobile recording devices (e.g., mobile phones, wearable cameras, vehicle mounted cameras, etc.) while travelling along delivery routes for delivering items. For assisting a carrier in navigating along a delivery route, route images and related route information, such as visual cues associated with salient objects or features, may be selected from the visual route book data set and presented to the carrier (e.g., as part of a visual route summary and/or as based on a current location of the carrier).