Device Positioning Via Device-Sensed Data Evaluation

• US 20130124081A1
• Filed: 11/14/2011
• Published: 05/16/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Khosravy, Moe, Liensberger, Christian
• Granted Patent: US 9,297,881 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/408
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/206 specially adapted for indoor navigation
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/485 whereby the further system is an optical system or imaging system
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services

Abstract

The subject disclosure is directed towards a technology by which data sensed at a device may be used to determine the likely location of the device, independent of whether GPS data is also available. In one aspect, information representing the sensed device data is sent to a remote service, where it is compared with similar information for known locations to find a matching location. In another aspect, the information is locally processed against locally cached information to find a matching location.

Claims

1. A system comprising, a processor and a memory, the processor configured to execute code in the memory, the code corresponding to at least part of a location determination mechanism, the location determination mechanism configured to automatically determine at least one likely location of a device based upon a set of information corresponding at least in part to data sensed at the device, independent of whether the data sensed at the device includes global positioning system-sensed data, including by matching the information against a set of known locations maintained in a data store, in which each known location in the set is associated with other information that corresponds to sensed data for that known location.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the data sensed at the device includes altitude data or environment-related data, or both altitude data and environment-related data.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the environment-related data comprises at least one of:

temperature data, humidity data, or pressure data.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the data sensed at the device includes audio data or image data, or both audio data and image data.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the data sensed at the device comprises motion data or direction data, or both motion data and direction data.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein at least part of the information comprises feature data representing at least part of the data sensed at the device.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein at least part of the information comprises user input data.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the location determination mechanism is coupled to the device through a remote communications medium.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the location determination mechanism comprises a cloud-based service coupled to the device through a remote communications medium.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the location determination mechanism and at least part of the data store are incorporated into the device.

11. In a computing environment, a method performed at least in part on at least one processor comprising, processing device-related information received as data collected from one or more device sensors to determine at least one likely location of a device, including accessing a data store to obtain a plurality of sets of information, each set of information associated with a known location, and using the device-related information to reduce the plurality of sets of information to one or more likely sets of information corresponding to the one or more likely known locations, and outputting data representative of the one or more likely known locations.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the data store is accessed by a service that is remote relative to the device, and wherein outputting the data representative of the one or more likely known locations comprises returning the data representative of the one or more likely known locations in response to a request from the device.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein outputting the data representative of the one or more likely known locations comprises displaying a visible representation of at least one of the one or more likely known locations.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein processing the device-related information is performed on the device, and further comprising, downloading at least some of the data in the data store from a remote data source.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein processing the device-related information comprises using at least some of the device-related information to filter the plurality of sets of information to a lesser number of sets of information.

16. The method of claim 11 wherein at least some of the device-related information comprises device feature data, wherein at least some of the information in the sets of information comprises known location feature data, and wherein processing the device-related information comprises comparing a device feature vector representing the device feature data against known location feature vectors representing the known location feature data to determine a similarity measure of the device feature vector and each of the known location feature vectors.

17. The method of claim 11 further comprising, obtaining current state data to update at least part of the plurality of sets of information with current state data.

18. The method of claim 11 further comprising, collecting data representative of the one or more likely known locations for each of a plurality of users, and providing that data to a recipient.

19. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:

inputting device-related information corresponding to device-sensed data;

matching the device-related information against a plurality of known information sets, each information set representing a known location; and

determining a most likely location of the device based upon the matching.

20. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 19 wherein at least some of the device-related information is represented by a weighted feature vector, wherein at least some of each information set is represented by a weighted feature vector, and wherein matching the device-related information against the plurality of known information sets comprises comparing vectors for similarity.