Representing Traffic Along a Route

• US 20130332057A1
• Filed: 09/30/2012
• Published: 12/12/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Moore, Christopher D., Pahwa, Aroon, Hu, Yaohua
• Granted Patent: US 10,119,831 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/118
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3626 Details of the output of route guidance instructions traffic control systems for road vehicles involving transmission of navigation instructions to the vehicle G08G1/0968
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/367 Details, e.g. road map scale, orientation, zooming, illumination, level of detail, scrolling of road map or positioning of current position marker
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3676 Overview of the route on the road map
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3694 Output thereof on a road map
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/047 Optimisation of routes or paths, e.g. travelling salesman problem
• 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 2200/24 involving graphical user interfaces [GUIs]
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0962 having an indicator mounted inside the vehicle, e.g. giving voice messages
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0967 Systems involving transmission of highway information, e.g. weather, speed limits transmission of navigation instructions to the vehicle G08G1/0968
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096716 where the received information does not generate an automatic action on the vehicle control
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096741 where the source of the transmitted information selects which information to transmit to each vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096775 where the origin of the information is a central station
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096816 where the complete route is transmitted to the vehicle at once
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096827 where the route is computed onboard
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096861 where the immediate route instructions are output to the driver, e.g. arrow signs for next turn
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 999/99 dummy group

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a mapping application that has a novel way of displaying traffic congestion along roads in the map. The mapping application in some embodiments defines a traffic congestion representation to run parallel to its corresponding road portion when the map is viewed at a particular zoom level, and defines a traffic congestion representation to be placed over its corresponding road portion when the map is viewed at another zoom level. The mapping application in some embodiments differentiates the appearance of the traffic congestion representation that signifies heavy traffic congestion from the appearance of the traffic congestion representation that signifies moderate traffic congestion. In some of these embodiments, the mapping application does not generate a traffic congestion representation for areas along a road that are not congested.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a mapping program comprising:

a user interface (UI) module comprising a display area for displaying a map having a plurality of roads;

a rendering module for drawing on the map a first traffic representation to represent heavy traffic congestion along a first portion of a first road and a second traffic representation to represent moderate traffic congestion along a second portion of the first road or a second road.

2. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the rendering module does not draw any representation of traffic for any portion of any road that does not have heavy or moderate traffic congestion.

3. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first traffic representation is in a first color and the second traffic representation is in a second color.

4. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn along and adjacent to the first and second road portions.

5. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn over the first and second road portions.

6. The machine readable medium of claim 1,

wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn along and adjacent to the first and second road portions when the map is being displayed at a first zoom level;

wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn over the first and second road portions when the map is being displayed at a second zoom level.

7. The machine readable medium of claim 6, wherein the first zoom level will result in the road portion being too narrow for the traffic congestion representation to be laid over.

8. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein each traffic representation is a patterned line segment.

9. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the rendering module is further for rendering the map with the plurality of roads and rendering graphical objects on the map to indicate road conditions other than traffic congestion.

10. The machine readable medium of claim 9, wherein the rendering module renders a perspective view of a three-dimensional (3D) map scene in which the graphical objects are vertically standing objects within the scene or are objects that are within 45 degrees of the vertical direction in the scene.

11. The machine readable medium of claim 1,

wherein the display area is a first display area;

wherein the rendering module is further for drawing graphical indicators relating to road conditions; and

wherein selection of a graphical indicator causes the UI module to present a second display area that displays information about the road condition associated with the selected graphical indicator.

12. The machine readable medium of claim 11, wherein to display the second display area, the UI module display area opens the second display area to fully overlap the first display area.

13. The machine readable medium of claim 11, wherein to display the second display area, the UI module display area opens the second display area to partially overlap the first display area.

14. The machine readable medium of claim 11, wherein the road conditions include at least one of road accidents, road construction, road closings, and road hazards.

15. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a mapping program, the mapping program comprising sets of instructions for:

presenting a display area for displaying the map with a plurality of roads;

drawing on the map a first traffic representation to represent heavy traffic congestion along a first portion of a first road;

drawing a second traffic representation to represent moderate traffic congestion along a second portion of the first road or a second road.

16. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the sets of instructions for drawing the traffic representations do not include a set of instructions for drawing a representation of traffic for any portion of any road that does not have heavy or moderate traffic congestion.

17. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the first traffic representation is in a first color and the second traffic representation is in a second color.

18. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn along and adjacent to the first and second road portions.

19. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the first and second traffic representations are drawn over the first and second road portions.

20. The machine readable medium of claim 15,

wherein the program further comprises a set of instructions for identifying a zoom level for displaying a particular area of the map to display with a particular level of detail;

wherein the sets of instructions for drawing the first and second traffic representations comprises sets of instructions for

(i) drawing the first and second traffic representations along and adjacent to the first and second road portions when the map is being displayed at a first zoom level;

(ii) drawing the first and second traffic representations over the first and second road portions when the map is being displayed at a second zoom level.

21. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the display area is a first display area, wherein the program further comprises sets of instructions for

drawing graphical indicators relating to road conditions;

and

upon selection of a graphical indicator, presenting a second display area that displays information about the road condition associated with the selected graphical indicator.

22. The machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the sets of instructions for drawing the first and second traffic representations comprises sets of instructions for:

identifying portions of the traffic representations that are near a route being displayed;

differently drawing the portions of the traffic representations that are near the displayed route from the portions of the traffic representations that are not near the displayed route.

23. The machine readable medium of claim 22, wherein the set of instructions for differently drawing the portions of the traffic representations that are near the displayed route from the portions of the traffic representations that are not near the displayed route comprises a set of instructions for diminishing the appearance of the portions of the traffic representations that are near the displayed route so that the diminished portions do not interfere with the presentation of the displayed route.