METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR UNIVERSAL AND UNIFIED LOCATION REPRESENTATION AND ITS INTERACTION WITH GPS DEVICES
First Claim
1. A method for creating a canonical representation for a physical location, the canonical representation operating as a uniform identifier for a variety of descriptive location forms, the method comprising the steps of:
- receiving location descriptive information for a particular location from an input device;
parsing the location descriptive information by a processing unit to identify address characteristics;
normalizing the location descriptive information by a processing unit mapping the identified characteristics to common synonyms; and
converting the normalized location descriptive information by a processing unit into the canonical representation.
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Abstract
Location information is translated from a variety of formats to a common uniform format and then fed into a GPS device in an easy and automatic manner. A global canonical and unique numeric representation of a specific location is created. This involves a global bi-directional translation method between an address, which may reside or presently exist in one of many possible formats, into a uniform standardized canonical representation of location. The uniform location representation can be read by, and later transferred into, a GPS device. Advantageously, this eases the process of finding desired destinations in various ways, and the ease of storing location data regarding those destinations.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method for creating a canonical representation for a physical location, the canonical representation operating as a uniform identifier for a variety of descriptive location forms, the method comprising the steps of:
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receiving location descriptive information for a particular location from an input device; parsing the location descriptive information by a processing unit to identify address characteristics; normalizing the location descriptive information by a processing unit mapping the identified characteristics to common synonyms; and converting the normalized location descriptive information by a processing unit into the canonical representation. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A method for creating a canonical representation for a physical location, the canonical representation operating as a uniform identifier for a variety of descriptive location forms, the method comprising the steps of:
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receiving a plurality of location descriptors from an input device, each being associated with a particular location; parsing each of the location descriptors by a processing unit to identify address characteristics; normalizing the location descriptors by a processing unit mapping the identified characteristics to common synonyms; identifying physical locations associated with the normalized location descriptors; converting the normalized location descriptor by a processing unit into canonical representations; associating the canonical representations with the physical location; and storing the canonical representation and the association into a database.
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Specification