Techniques for improving location accuracy for virtual maps

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9544736-B2
Application number	US-201314129946-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 31, 2013
Priority date	Jul 31, 2013
Publication date	Jan 10, 2017
Grant date	Jan 10, 2017

Abstract

Various embodiments are generally directed to techniques to provide location sensing of a virtual map derived from sensors of a computing device moved about an interior of a structure. An apparatus for location sensing includes a processor component; and a refined trajectory generator, an inconsistent constraint identifier for identifier inconsistent constraints used to generate the refined trajectories, and an updated constraint set generator for updating the constraint set to remove the identified inconsistent constraints. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An apparatus to identify an inconsistent constraint comprising:
a processor component;
an inconsistent constraint identifier for execution by the processor component to identify an inconsistent constraint from a set of constraints to provide location accuracy, each constraint of the set of constraints comprising indications of a point on a first refined trajectory that corresponds to a point on a second refined trajectory, the first refined trajectory comprising indications of a first virtual pathway through an interior of a structure based on sensor information, and the second refined trajectory comprising indications of a second virtual pathway through the interior of the structure; and
a residual error calculator for execution by the processor component to determine a residual error for the inconsistent constraint based on a distance between a first point in the first refined trajectory and a second point in the second refined trajectory, the first and second points corresponding to a location, and
the inconsistent constraint identifier to identify the inconsistent constraint based at least in part on the residual error being greater than a distance threshold.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , comprising a distance threshold calculator for execution by the processor component to determine the distance threshold from residual errors determined by the residual error calculator for each of the constraints.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , the inconsistent constraint identifier to identify constraints from the set of constraints whose residual error is greater than the distance threshold as an inconsistent constraint.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , comprising a refined trajectory generator for execution by the processor component to generate the first refined trajectory and the second refined trajectory from a first initial trajectory and a second initial trajectory and the set of constraints, each constraint of the set of constraints comprising indications of the point on the first initial trajectory that corresponds to the point on the second initial trajectory, the first initial trajectory comprising indications of the first virtual pathway through the interior of the structure, and the second initial trajectory comprising indications of the second virtual pathway through the interior of the structure.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 , comprising an updated constraint set generator for execution by the processor component to generate an updated set of constraints, the updated set of constraints excluding constraints identified as inconsistent constraints.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 , the inconsistent constraint identifier to identify an inconsistent constraint from the updated set of constraints.

7. The apparatus of claim 5 , the inconsistent constraint identifier, the updated constraint set generator, and the refined trajectory generator to repeatedly identify an inconsistent constraint, generate an updated set of constraints and generate updated refined trajectories.

8. A computer-implemented method for identifying an inconsistent constraint comprising:
determining a residual error for each constraint of a set of constraints, each constraint of the set of constraints comprising indications of a point on a first refined trajectory that corresponds to a point on a second refined trajectory, the first refined trajectory comprising indications of a first virtual pathway through an interior of a structure based on sensors, the second refined trajectory comprising indications of a second virtual pathway through the interior of the structure based on sensors, each residual error based on a distance between corresponding points in the first refined trajectory and the second refined trajectory, each of corresponding points to correspond with a location; and
identifying an inconsistent constraint from the set of constraints based at least in part on a residual error being greater than a distance threshold to provide location accuracy.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8 , comprising:
determining the distance threshold from the residual errors; and
identifying constraints of the set of constraints whose residual error is greater than the distance threshold.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9 , comprising generating an updated set of constraints that excludes the identified inconsistent constraints.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10 , comprising:
determining a residual error for each constraint of a updated set of constraints; and
identifying an inconsistent constraint from the updated set of constraints based at least in part on the residual errors.

12. At least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions that when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to:
determine a residual error for each constraint of a set of constraints, each constraint of the set of constraints comprising indications of a point on a first refined trajectory that corresponds to a point on a second refined trajectory, the first refined trajectory comprising indications of a first virtual pathway through an interior of a structure based on sensors, the second refined trajectory comprising indications of a second virtual pathway through the interior of the structure based on sensors, each residual error based on a distance between corresponding points in the first refined trajectory and the second refined trajectory, each of the corresponding points to correspond with a location; and
identify an inconsistent constraint from the set of constraints based at least in part on a residual error being greater than a distance threshold to provide location accuracy.

13. The at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 12 , the computing device caused to identify constraints of the set of constraints whose residual error is greater than a selected distance threshold.

14. The at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 13 , the computing device caused to:
determine the distance threshold from the residual errors; and
identify constraints of the set of constraints whose residual error is greater than the distance threshold.

15. The at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 14 , the computing device caused to:
generate an updated set of constraints that excludes the identified inconsistent constraints;
generate a first updated refined trajectory from the first initial trajectory, the second initial trajectory, and the updated set of constraints; and
generate a second updated refined trajectory from the first initial trajectory, the second initial trajectory, and the updated set of constraints.

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Yang Lei
• Yang Xue

Classifications

• H04W4/04 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G01C21/206 Primary

  specially adapted for indoor navigation · CPC title

• H04W4/029 Primary

  Location-based management or tracking services · CPC title

• H04W4/33

  for indoor environments, e.g. buildings · CPC title