CORRELATING WIRELESS SIGNALS TO A LOCATION ON AN IMAGE USING MOBILE SENSOR TECHNOLOGIES

• US 20130115971A1
• Filed: 10/29/2012
• Published: 05/09/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/27/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Point Inside, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Point Inside, Inc.
• Inventors: MARTI, Joshua L., CROY, Jonathan A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,301,097 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/025 using location based information parameters

Abstract

Using ground truth events and sensors available on a first mobile device, an algorithm executed at the first mobile device determines the mobile device'"'"'s position; the first mobile device also obtains wireless signal information; the wireless signal information is associated with the position determined via the sensor data and ground truth events; the associated data is stored and may be sent to or used by a second device; the second device may then, for example, detect then-current wireless signal information and may locate the second device by looking up the then-current wireless signal information in the associated data.

Claims

1. A method of correlating wireless signals to a location in an image in a first computer comprising a memory, comprising:

receiving a user event at the first computer, which user event associates the first computer with a first position in the image;

receiving data from sensors at the first computer;

determining a second position of the first computer based on the data received from the sensors;

sampling wireless signal information at the first computer;

storing the wireless signal information in association with the determined second position as correlated wireless signal and determined position information; and

transmitting the correlated wireless signal and determined position information to a second computer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the second computer transmitting the correlated wireless signal and determined position information to a third computer.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the third computer samples wireless signal information and uses the wireless signal information sampled by the third computer and the correlated wireless signal and determined position information received from the second computer to determine the location of the third computer.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the second position of the first computer is performed at a first rate and wherein sampling the wireless sign information is performed at a second rate.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the second rate is selected to be equal to or less than the first rate

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving the image at the first computer. from the second computer.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the user event comprises receiving an indication that a user touched a portion of the image in a user interface of the first computer.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the touched portion of the image corresponds to coordinates in the world, which coordinates are assigned as the first position.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the user event comprises receiving an indication that a user contacted a ground truth event sensor.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the ground truth event sensor is mapped to coordinates in the world.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the ground truth event sensor comprises at least one of a barcode, a QR code, and a near field communication device.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising sending data associated with the user event to the second computer and receiving the first position from the second computer.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the ground truth event sensor communicates the first position to the first computer.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the sensors at the first computer comprise at least one of a gyro, a compass, a barometer, and an accelerometer.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the second position is determined by vector analysis of the sensor data.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the image comprises pixels and wherein the pixels are mapped to coordinates of a physical location.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless signal information comprises an identifier of the device which emitted the wireless signal information.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless signal information comprises a power level of the wireless signal information.

19. The method of claim 3, wherein the third computer determines the location of the third computer by matching the wireless signal information sampled by the third computer to the wireless signal information in the correlated wireless signal and determined position information and selecting the location in the correlated wireless signal and determined position information corresponding to the wireless signal information sampled by the third computer.

20. A computer system with a computer readable medium comprising instructions which, when executed, perform the method according to claim 1.