Techniques for generating maps of venues including buildings and floors

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9913100-B2
Application number	US-201414503109-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 30, 2014
Priority date	May 30, 2014
Publication date	Mar 6, 2018
Grant date	Mar 6, 2018

Abstract

Techniques for storing information representing a venue are described. A venue data provider may upload venue data to a venue data service. The venue data can include locations, geometries, and business categories of the buildings and floors. The venue data service can validate the venue data, and request a survey service to survey the venue using the validated venue data. A survey can include recording measurements of an environment variable at various locations of the venue. The location service can generate location fingerprint data from the survey. The location fingerprint data can include expected measurements of the environment variable at various locations of the building. The venue data service can provide the location fingerprint data to a mobile device such that the mobile device can determine a location of the mobile device in the venue using sensor readings of the environment variable.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
receiving, by a venue data server, venue data representing a layout of a venue;
validating, by the venue data server, the venue data;
sending, by the venue data server, the validated venue data to a sampling device;
requesting, by the venue data server, survey data comprising measurements of wireless signals in the venue;
receiving, by the venue data server, the survey data from the sampling device;
integrating the venue data and the survey data to determine location fingerprint data of the venue, the location fingerprint data including expected measurements of the wireless signals at respective locations in the venue; and
providing, by the venue data server, the location fingerprint data to a device through at least one of a map service or an indoor location service.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the venue data is received through a web upload according to a venue data upload application programming interface (API) using real time submission from a venue data provider computer or using a batch data pull by the venue data server from a venue data provider computer.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein validating the venue data comprises performing at least one of building footprint validation, flyover validation, or three-dimensional visualization validation.

4. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
generating a venue map by the venue data server, the venue map representing internal features of the venue; and
providing the venue map to a device operated by a venue data provider for review and edit.

5. The method of claim 1 , comprising providing, to the sampling device, a survey application for conducting a survey that generates the survey data, the survey application configured to:
display a venue map on a display device of the sampling device;
receive a user input at a starting location on the venue map to start the survey, wherein, when the survey is started, the survey application records sensor readings of one or more environmental variables as detected by a sensor and associates each of the sensor readings with a current location of the sampling device and a timestamp; and
submit the recorded sensor readings as the survey data to the venue data server.

6. The method of claim 1 , comprising integrating venue data with external data to generate map data that represents internal structure of the venue in a map of geographic features, the external data including:
base map data representing geometry and topology of geographic features;
probe data including anonymized location and heading information submitted by user devices;
flyover data including information on three-dimensional geographic features;
user report data including user provided corrections on the base map data or venue data; and
web data on geographic features from publicly available web sites.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein integrating the venue data and the survey data comprises:
identifying states of the venue against which individual surveys were created;
determining which state is compatible with the individual surveys based on respective temporal and respective geographic data associated with a plurality of data sets; and
integrating the venue data and the survey data based on compatible versions of the venue data and the survey data, wherein one or more compatible versions of the venue data are applied to support positioning in an indoor environment where satellite positioning signals are unavailable.

8. A system comprising:
one or more processors; and
a storage device storing computer instructions operable to cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
receiving, by a venue data server, venue data representing a layout of a venue;
validating, by the venue data server, the venue data;
submitting, by the venue data server, the validated venue data to a sampling device;
requesting, by the venue data server, survey data comprising measurements of wireless signals in the venue;
receiving, by the venue data server, the survey data from the sampling device;
integrating the venue data and the survey data to determine location fingerprint data of the venue, the location fingerprint data including expected measurements of the wireless signals at respective locations in the venue; and
providing, by the venue data server, the location fingerprint data to a device through at least one of a map service or an indoor location service.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the venue data is received through a web upload according to a venue data upload application programming interface (API) using real time submission from a venue data provider computer or using a batch data pull by the venue data server from a venue data provider computer.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein validating the venue data comprises performing at least one of building footprint validation, flyover validation, or three-dimensional visualization validation.

11. The system of claim 8 , the operations comprising:
generating a venue map by the venue data server, the venue map representing internal features of the venue; and
providing the venue map to a device operated by a venue data provider for review and edit.

12. The system of claim 8 , the operations comprising providing, to the sampling device, a survey application for conducting a survey that generates the survey data, the survey application configured to:
display a venue map on a display device of the sampling device;
receive a user input at a starting location on the venue map to start the survey, wherein, when the survey is started, the survey application records sensor readings of one or more environmental variables as detected by a sensor and associates each of the sensor readings with a current location of the sampling device and a timestamp; and
submit the recorded sensor readings as the survey data to the venue data server.

13. The system of claim 8 , the operations comprising integrating venue data with external data to generate map data that represents internal structure of the venue in a map of geographic features, the external data including:
base map data representing geometry and topology of geographic features;
probe data including anonymized location and heading information submitted by user devices;
flyover data including information on three-dimensional geographic features;
user report data including user provided corrections on the base map data or venue data; and
web data on geographic features from publicly available web sites.

14. The system of claim 8 , wherein integrating the venue data and the survey data comprises:
identifying states of the venue against which individual surveys were created;
determining which state is compatible with the individual surveys based on respective temporal and respective geographic data associated with a plurality of data sets; and
integrating the venue data and the survey data based on compatible versions of the venue data and the survey data, wherein one or more compatible versions of the venue data are applied to support positioning in an indoor environment where satellite positioning signals are unavailable.

15. A non-transitory storage device storing computer instructions operable to cause one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
receiving, by a venue data server, venue data including a representation of a layout of a venue;
validating, by the venue data server, the venue data;
submitting, by the venue data server, the validated venue data to a sampling device;
requesting, by the venue data server, survey data compris

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Agarwal Ashish
• Mondragon Ian Aric
• Ravikumar Rahul
• Lin Calvin
• Muller Iii Max
• Stanger Philip
• Samsalovic Vojislav

Classifications

• G01C21/206

  specially adapted for indoor navigation · CPC title

• H04W4/043

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W4/028 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W4/30

  Services specially adapted for particular environments, situations or purposes · CPC title

• H04W4/029 Primary

  Location-based management or tracking services · CPC title