SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING, STORING AND UTILIZING IMAGES OF A GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

• US 20130107034A1
• Filed: 06/01/2012
• Published: 05/02/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/06/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vederi LLC
• Original Assignee: Vederi LLC
• Inventors: Di Bernardo, Enrico, Goncalves, Luis F.
• Granted Patent: US 8,818,138 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/116
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 11/02 Picture taking arrangements specially adapted for photogrammetry or photographic surveying, e.g. controlling overlapping of pictures
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3848 Data obtained from both position sensors and additional sensors
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/387 Organisation of map data, e.g. version management or database structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/4038 Image mosaicing, e.g. composing plane images from plane sub-images
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/3876 Recombination of partial images to recreate the original image
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/77 between a recording apparatus and a television camera

Abstract

A system and method synthesizing images of a locale to generate a composite image that provide a panoramic view of the locale. A video camera moves along a street recording images of objects along the street. A GPS receiver and inertial navigation system provide the position of the camera as the images are being recorded. The images are indexed with the position data. The composite image is created on a column-by-column basis by determining which of the acquired images contains the desired pixel column, extracting the pixels associated with the column, and stacking the columns side by side. The composite images are stored in an image database and associated with a street name and number range of the street being depicted in the image. The image database covers a substantial amount of a geographic area allowing a user to visually navigate the area from a user terminal.

Claims

1. In a system including an image source and a portable communication device having a screen, a method for enabling visual navigation of a geographic area from the portable communication device, the method comprising:

receiving a first user input specifying a first location in the geographic area;

retrieving from the image source a first image associated with the first location, the image source providing a plurality of images depicting views of objects in the geographic area, the views being substantially elevations of the objects in the geographic area, wherein each image is a composite image generated based on image frames acquired by an image recording device moving along a trajectory;

displaying on the screen a direction identifier for indicating the viewing direction depicted in the first image;

receiving a second user input specifying a navigation direction relative to the first location in the geographic area;

determining a second location based on the user specified navigation direction; and

retrieving from the image source a second image associated with the second location.