Wayarea Grouping for Marine Navigation Clutter Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing marine navigation systems face challenges in managing numerous waypoints, leading to clutter and confusion, making it difficult for users to efficiently locate and utilize relevant locations for activities like fishing or diving.
Innovation Solution
The formation of wayareas, which are defined areas encompassing multiple waypoints with associated characteristics, allowing users to group and easily select areas suitable for specific activities based on filtering criteria, weather, tide, and other conditions, and display them with highlighting for easy identification.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If users save numerous waypoints to mark ideal locations for activities, then the system can store more location data, but the chart becomes cluttered and difficult to navigate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual waypoints into grouped wayareas. Instead of displaying each waypoint separately on the chart, the system combines them into unified wayarea objects that represent collections of related waypoints, thereby reducing visual clutter while preserving the underlying location data
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the chart display into different levels of detail. Users can view wayareas as unified objects at a high level, and only drill down to individual waypoints when needed. This segmentation allows the system to manage large numbers of waypoints without overwhelming the user with detail at once
2Adaptability or versatility
If users have a plurality of waypoints relevant to certain scenarios, then more location options are available, but the user experience becomes confusing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by associating specific characteristics with each wayarea, such as weather conditions, season, time of day, tide data, and depth data. This allows the system to differentiate and organize waypoints based on their local properties and relevance to specific activities, making the interface more intuitive
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameters used to organize and display location data. Instead of displaying all waypoints uniformly, the system filters and sorts wayareas based on multiple parameters including weather, season, time, tide, and depth, allowing users to view only the relevant information for their current needs
3Loss of information
If the system displays detailed waypoint information on the chart, then users have comprehensive data, but the chart becomes difficult to read
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts detailed waypoint information from the chart display and stores it in associated data structures. The chart itself displays only simplified wayarea representations, while comprehensive information about individual waypoints is available through separate data links, maintaining both simplicity and completeness
Data Source
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AI summary
Example systems and methods are provided herein for creating and displaying wayareas on a screen. A system includes a memory and a processor, and the processor is configured to retrieve a plurality of waypoints from the memory. Each of the plurality of waypoints is associated with a location and one or more waypoint characteristics, which include at least one of weather data, season data, time of day data, tide data or depth data. The plurality of waypoints are presented on the screen and a desired set of waypoints are determined based on either a filtering process or user input. A wayarea is created from the desired set of waypoints and then saved to the memory. The system also displays a plurality of wayareas on the screen, each as highlighted shapes, and the plurality of wayareas may be filtered based on certain characteristics.