Method and Apparatus of Providing Street View Data of a Real Estate Property

• US 20130182108A1
• Filed: 03/09/2013
• Published: 07/18/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Visual Real Estate Incorporated (California Gold Corporation)
• Original Assignee: MV Patents LLC
• Inventors: Meadow, William D., Gordie, Randall A. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 9,311,397 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/143
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/50 of still image data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/587 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/787 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0278 Product appraisal
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0629 for generating comparisons
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/16 Real estate
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 17/05 Geographic models
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 17/20 Finite element generation, e.g. wire-frame surface description, tesselation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 19/006 Mixed reality object pose determination, tracking or camera calibration for mixed reality G06T7/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/4038 Image mosaicing, e.g. composing plane images from plane sub-images
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/698 : for achieving an enlarged field of view, e.g. panoramic image capture
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/28 : Mobile studios
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/18 : Closed-circuit television [CCTV] systems, i.e. systems in which the video signal is not broadcast
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/181 : for receiving images from a plurality of remote sources

Abstract

Video drive-by data provides a street level view of a neighborhood surrounding a selected geographic location. A video and data server farm incorporates a video storage server that stores video image files containing video drive-by data corresponding to a geographic location, a database server that processes a data query received from a user over the Internet corresponding to a geographic location of interest, and an image processing server. In operation, the database server identifies video image files stored in the video storage server that correspond to the geographic location of interest contained in the data query and transfers the video image files over a pre-processing network to the image processing server. The image processing server converts the video drive-by data to post-processed video data corresponding to a desired image format and transfers the post-processed video data via a post-processing network to the Internet in response to the query.

Claims

1-21. -21. (canceled)

22. A tangible computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor to perform a method for providing a street level image associated with a first real estate property, the method comprising:

(a) receiving a first request, wherein the request is received across a network;

(b) providing user interface data, wherein the user interface data comprises;

overhead map data; and

a click through link associated with a first real estate property indicated in the overhead map data, wherein the click through link initiates a second request for captured image data including an image captured by a camera oriented at street level to the first real estate property;

(c) receiving the second request; and

(d) providing the captured image data and layer data associated with the first real estate property.

23. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the camera is a video camera, and wherein the captured image data includes multiple frames captured by the video camera.

24. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the captured image data is captured by a plurality of cameras oriented at street level to the first real estate property, and wherein each of the plurality of cameras are approximately co-located.

25. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the first request of (a) is a webpage request made by a browser.

26. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the providing of (b) is performed in response to receiving the first request in (a), wherein the overhead map data is used to display a map to a user, wherein the click through link is superimposed on the map and is visible to the user, and wherein the first real estate property is indicated on the map.

27. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the second request of (c) is a webpage request made by a browser.

28. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the providing of (d) is performed in response to receiving the second request in (c), wherein the layer data is superimposed on the captured image data, thereby generating a composite image, and wherein the composite image is displayed to a user.

29. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the layer data includes information taken from the group consisting of:

geo-coded data, vector data, property county parcel data, landmark data or county property line data.

30. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the captured image data associated with the first real estate property comprises an image that that is centered on a centroid of a parcel on which the first real estate property is located.

31. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the layer data includes information taken from the group consisting of:

Multiple Listing Services (MLS) data, record data, sale price data of the first real estate property, sale price data of a comparable real estate property, owner data, or address data of the first real estate property.

32. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the camera is attached to a vehicle traveling at street level relative to the first real estate property, and wherein the captured image data comprises a plurality of images captured from discrete points traversed by the vehicle while the vehicle is in proximity to the first real estate property.

33. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 25, wherein the captured image data includes three hundred and sixty degree street views about the plurality of cameras.

34. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, the method further comprising:

(e) providing aerial data associated with the first real estate property, wherein the aerial data includes an overhead photo of the first real estate property.

35. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the network in (a) is the Internet.

36. A system, comprising:

a first storage device that stores captured image data associated with the first real estate property; and

a processor, wherein the processor receives a first request, wherein the processor provides user interface data, and wherein the user interface data comprises;

overhead map data; and

a click through link associated with a first real estate property indicated in the overhead map data, wherein the click through link initiates a second request for captured image data including an image captured by a camera oriented at street level to the first real estate property.

37. The system of claim 36, wherein the processor receives the second request and in response provides the captured image data and layer data associated with the first real estate property.

38. The system of claim 36, further comprising:

a second storage device that stores the layer data associated with the first real estate property.

39. The system of claim 36, wherein the camera is a video camera, and wherein the captured image data includes multiple images captured by the video camera.

40. The system of claim 36, further comprising:

a plurality of cameras, wherein the captured image data is captured by the plurality of cameras oriented at street level to the first real estate property, and wherein each of the plurality of cameras are approximately co-located.

41. The system of claim 36, wherein the first and second requests are communicated via the Internet.