Building structure discovery and display from various data artifacts at scene

• US 8,990,049 B2
• Filed: 05/03/2010
• Issued: 03/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Plocher, Tom, Chen, Henry
• Primary Examiner(s): Shah, Kamini S
• Assistant Examiner(s): GUILL, RUSSELL L
• Application Number:
  US12/772,310
• Publication Number:
  US 20110270584A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,786 Days
• Field of Search: 703/1
• US Class Current: 703/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/13 Architectural design, e.g. computer-aided architectural design [CAAD] related to design of buildings, bridges, landscapes, production plants or roads

Abstract

An approach for developing information about a building of which little or no information is known at a time when firefighters need to enter the building. The approach may incorporate obtaining an image of the building from a publicly available resource. An outside boundary of the building may be determined from the image. The number of floors may be determined. A 3D floor plan may be generated from the boundary and the number of floors. Structural components may be added to the 3D floor plan, which are deduced from movements of firefighters, and the movements may be deduced from their locations. The locations may be transmitted by devices on the firefighters. Structural components of the building indicated by persons in the vicinity of the building may also be added to the 3D floor plan.

Claims

1. A method implemented in a computing device for generating a quick approximation of a building structure and displaying the generated building structure on a display connected to the computing device, comprising:

downloading a publicly available resource image of a structure with the computing device;

creating a structure outline with the computing device from the downloaded resource image;

setting the number of floors of the structure outline from a perspective view of the resource image or other source through interacting with a feature displayed on the display;

generating a 3D floor plan of the structure with the computing device from the structure outline and the set number of floors;

displaying the generated 3D floor plan of the structure and positions of emergency service personnel within the structure on the display;

adding distributions of the positions of the emergency service personnel within the structure to the floor plan;

normalizing the floor plan with the distributions of the positions of the emergency service personnel thereon;

determining various behaviors of the emergency service personnel with the computing device from trajectories of the emergency service personnel within the structure;

identifying components of the structure with the computing device from the determined various behaviors of the emergency service personnel; and

updating the 3D floor plan on the display to show components of the structure as they are discovered with the computing device; and

wherein the distributions of the positions of the emergency service personnel on the normalized floor plan are compared to some identified threshold to identify components of the structure.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting a button on the display to set an origin point of a tracking system and register the 3D floor plan to the tracking system.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying components of the structure with the computing device from the emergency service personnels'"'"' positions and/or movements in the structure as tracked with a tracking system in communication with the computing device; and

wherein;

emergency service people wear location equipment that transmits their locations in the structure to the computing device; and

movements are deduced from the locations.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein:

trajectories of persons are identified by the computing device from the locations of the emergency service people;

components of the structure are identified from data fusion by the computing device; and

data fusion comprises;

trajectories of a person at different times; and

/or

trajectories of different persons as data from various sensors.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein multiple trajectories identify rooms and hallways of the structure.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the distribution of the positions of the emergency service personnel is a Gaussian distributions.

7. A method implemented in a computing device having a processor for generating a building structure and displaying the generated building structure on a display, comprising:

displaying features of an exterior of a building on the display;

setting the number of floors of the building with the computing device based on the displayed features of the exterior of the building;

generating a 3D floor plan of the building with the computing device from exterior features of the building and the set number of floors;

displaying the generated 3D floor plan of the building on the display with the computing device;

identifying time series data of trajectories of personnel within the building with the computing device;

identifying components of the building with the computing device by applying a Markov model, with the computing device, to the identified time series data to identify personnel behavior and deduce the components of the building from the identified personnel behavior; and

updating the generated 3D floor plan of the building to add the identified components to the 3D floor plan of the building with the computing device as the components are identified; and

wherein components of the building are identified by the computing device when distributions of locations and movements of the personnel within the building reach a threshold value indicating the locations and movements are associated with a component of the building structure.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein identifying time series data of trajectories of personnel within the building comprises:

tracking the personnel within the building with a tracking system providing locations and movements of the personnel in three axes to the computing device.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

obtaining an image of the building with the computing device;

generating features of an exterior of the building from the image with the computing device, and

wherein displaying features of an exterior of the building on the display comprises displaying the computing device generated features of the exterior of the building on the display.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein obtaining an image of the building with the computing device comprises drawing a sketch of the building on a digitizer pad, taking photographs or video of the building, and/or downloading an image of the building from a publicly available resource.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein components of the building comprise one or more of a hallway, a stairway, an elevator, a doorway, and a wall.

12. A method implemented in a computing device for generating a quick approximation of features of a building structure and displaying the generated building structure on a display connected to the computing device, comprising:

generating a 3D floor plan of a building structure with a computing device;

displaying the generated 3D floor plan of the structure and positions of emergency service personnel within the building structure on the display;

determining various behaviors of the emergency service personnel by applying, with the computing device, a Markov model to time series data indicating trajectories of the emergency service personnel within the building structure;

identifying features of the building structure with the computing device from the determined various behaviors of the emergency service personnel; and

updating the 3D floor plan on the display to show features of the structure as they are discovered with the computing device; and

wherein features of the building structure are identified by the computing device when a distribution of locations and movements of the personnel within the building reach a threshold value indicating the locations and movements are associated with a component of the building structure.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein:

the time series data indicating trajectories of the emergency personnel within the building structure includes locations of the emergency service personnel in the building structure.