Method and System for Visualization Enhancement for Situational Awareness

• US 20150121222A1
• Filed: 12/31/2014
• Published: 04/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 09/06/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Robotic Research LLC, Robotic Research OPCO LLC
• Original Assignee: Iii, Raymond Paul Wilhelm
• Inventors: Lacaze, Alberto Daniel, Murphy, Karl Nicholas, Schneider, Anne Rachel, Wilhelm, Raymond Paul III
• Application Number:
  US14/587,295
• Publication Number:
  US 20150121222A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/717
• 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: G06F 16/444 Spatial browsing, e.g. 2D maps, 3D or virtual spaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• 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 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04855 Interaction with scrollbars
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/105 of operating discs

Abstract

An after-action, mission review tool that displays camera and navigation sensor data allowing a user to pan, tilt, and zoom through the images from front and back cameras on an vehicle, while simultaneously viewing time/date information, along with any available navigation information such as the latitude and longitude of the vehicle at that time instance.

Also displayed is a visual representation of the path the vehicle traversed; when the user clicks on the path, the image is automatically changed to the image corresponding to that position. If aerial images of the area are available, the path can be plotted on the geo-referenced image.

Claims

11-1. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of

providing a built-in 3D viewer;

displaying a 3D map in addition to the navigation and camera images;

locking the viewpoints of the three images to each other so that zooming and panning on the image will affect the 3D view and vice versa;

adjusting the 3d map, navigation map, and image to match the pan/tilt/zoom commands of the operator.

13. A program storage device readable by a computer machine, tangibly embodying program instructions executable by the computer machine to perform method steps for visualization enhancement for situational awareness, said method steps comprising:

providing a graphical user interface enabling a user to interact with the software program running on the computer machine running;

the computer machine providing a database of vehicle mission recordings;

selecting one or more mission recordings;

displaying a GUI window comprising;

a navigation map associated with the mission recording wherein,

the navigation map displays the traveled path traveled of an UGV Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) in a first color, if available

the current position of the vehicle is indicated by a shape in a second color,

a status display; and

taking one or more camera images from the mission recording;

overlaying on the top of the image display is the cardinal direction of the displayed camera image;

changing the direction with camera panning within the still frame image;

progressing through the timeline of a mission using a horizontal scroll bar slider wherein each slider increment is equivalent to moving one second in time;

allowing a user to jump to any point from the beginning to the end of the mission;

quickly incrementing or decrementing of the slider;

allowing the user to toggle between the front camera and the rear camera of the vehicle;

providing a set of playback controls.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising the steps of

adding one or more tags to a mission;

annotating the image data with one or more tags;

searching one or more missions by the tag.

providing a map server;

providing a map user interface;

providing controls so that the map display can be zoomed and panned using mouse actions;

selecting the time ranges to search using calendar inputs placed below the map display;

displaying status information to the right of the date/time selection; and

providing a timeline featured at the bottom of the UI map display.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the steps of

conducting a search,

when a search is conducted, events will appear on the timeline;

these events can be selected, and pertinent information is displayed above the timeline;

querying a specific location;

dragging a bounding box over the map;

the resulting navigation paths will be drawn on the display map;

search results summarizing the collections are found in the bounding box;

colored lines on the timeline represent the start time of each collection in the search results, where each collection is a ten minute segment of data; and

when an event on the timeline is selected, the collection information is displayed in the search results section.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising the steps of

downloading and displaying 360 degree imagery from the database;

and

displaying multiple images from different parts of the timeline simultaneously.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising the steps of

providing a search server;

using a combination of spatial and temporal indexes at varying scales to answer search queries that may include time, distance or producer identity constraints;

sending a query to a search server;

using a query optimizer to determine the best search strategy for the constraints given by the search server;

conducting a Time/ID search through global linear indices;

conducting a spatial search through indices in a hierarchy of grids where the server looks at a grid hierarchy that splits the surface of the planet into distinct cells.

data are associated with cells at certain levels of the hierarchy;

the server performs a recursive search within this hierarchy, identifying the largest cells that are entirely within the search radius;

cells that are only partially covered by the search area are subdivided until either a completely covered cell is found or the process reaches the lowest level of grid cells;

the server takes its list of matching cells and processes each one;

any cell that has been populated will appear in the root-level tree that maps cell IDs to a set of local indices;

when the particular cell is completely enclosed within the search area, the server looks in the cell'"'"'s local temporal index for collection units that match the time constraint, otherwise, the server will look in either a spatial tree for queries that match only part of the cell but do not specify a time range, or a local spatiotemporal index for queries that specify both a part of the cell and a time range; and

the search server returns a result set in which it lists each collection or 10-minute unit it found.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising the steps of

querying a unit or collection from the search server;

listing each collection'"'"'s data;

listing a selected unit or collection start time as well as its sequential number within the collection and all of the data that would be returned for the corresponding collection; and

including a summary of the unit or collection, consisting of a list of time-stamped points at a specified resolution.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising the steps of

selecting or clicking on a static object of interest (OOI) through two or more frames;

using the navigation information of the robot in those frames, along with the positions in the image clicked or selected;

triangulating the object to its global position;

adjusting the virtual camera to this new focus point;

moving forward and backward in the video stream;

centering the camera image by panning and tilting the virtual camera around the object; and

viewing the object from multiple angles.

21. The method of claim 19, further comprising the steps of

displaying path of the robots from both missions are displayed on the map in two different colors;

clicking the map on an overlapping location;

navigating to that location using the buttons on the app brings up the two images side by side;

using navigation information from the time the images were taken to align the orientation of the images so that the images shown on the screen are showing the same area of the environment;

locking the images so that moving a finger on the screen changes the pan/tilt/zoom of both images; and

comparing images from two separate missions.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein two missions can be compared after-action or a previous mission can be compared to the live mission.