Map application with improved navigation tools

• US 9,500,492 B2
• Filed: 04/16/2014
• Issued: 11/22/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Moore, Bradford A., Weinberg, Joshua C., Fino, Jorge, Larus, Mark B., McGavran, Christine B., Yue, Wesley
• Primary Examiner(s): Anwari, Maceeh
• Application Number:
  US14/254,257
• Publication Number:
  US 20150247736A1
• Time in Patent Office: 951 Days
• Field of Search: 701/411
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3484 Personalized, e.g. from learned user behaviour or user-defined profiles
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3617 using user history, behaviour, conditions or preferences, e.g. predicted or inferred from previous use or current movement
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3667 Display of a road map G01C21/3614 takes precedence; guidance using 3D or perspective road maps G01C21/3635
• 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

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a mapping application with novel navigation and/or search tools. In some embodiments, the mapping application formulates predictions about future destinations of a device that executes the mapping application, and provides dynamic notifications regarding these predicted destinations. For instance, when a particular destination is a likely destination (e.g., most likely destination) of the device, the mapping application in some embodiments presents a notification regarding the particular destination (e.g., plays an animation that presents the notification). This notification in some embodiments provides some information about (1) the predicted destination (e.g., a name and/or address for the predicted destination) and (2) a route to this predicted destination (e.g., an estimated time of arrival, distance, and/or amount of ETD for the predicted destination). In some embodiments, the notification is a dynamic not only because it is presented dynamically as the device travels, but also because the information that the notification displays about the destination and/or route to the destination is dynamically updated by the mapping application as the device travels.

Claims

1. A method for providing a navigation presentation on a device, the method comprising:

formulating a prediction that the device is traveling to a known destination;

after formulating the prediction, displaying in a user interface (UI) of the device a selectable option to initiate a non-prompting first navigation presentation to the predicted destination that provides navigation information for navigating a route to the destination without providing maneuver instructions at junctures along the route; and

upon selection of the selectable option, presenting the non-prompting first navigation presentation to provide information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination,

wherein the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination is presented in a selectable first display area, and

wherein, upon selection of the first display area, the first navigation presentation switches to a turn-by-turn second navigation presentation to the predicted destination that provides maneuver instructions at junctures along the route.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the non-prompting first navigation presentation comprises:

displaying the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination in a display area; and

updating the displayed information as the device travels along the route.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein presenting the non-prompting first navigation presentation further comprises displaying a representation of the device moving along a representation of the route as the device moves along the route to the destination.

4. The method of claim 1,

wherein the method further comprises displaying in the UI a set of controls on the device for initiating the turn-by-turn second navigation presentation to the predicted destination.

5. The method of claim 4,

wherein each of the first and second navigation presentations displays a representation of the device moving along a representation of the route as the device moves along the route to the destination.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

tracking a position of the device as the device travels along the route; and

correlating the tracked position of the device to a location on the route in order to move the displayed representation of the device along the displayed representation of the route.

7. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

during either the first or second presentation, providing re-routing notification when the device travels off the route; and

based on the re-routing, presenting a representation of another route to the destination.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein the selectable option is for selecting between the first navigation presentation and the second navigation presentation.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein formulating the prediction comprises:

identifying a set of regions that are potential destination regions for the device, each region in the set being a region in which the device resided for a duration of time in the past;

for each region in the set, computing a metric score to quantify a likelihood that the region is the destination of the device; and

based on the computed metric scores, selecting one of the regions as the predicted destination.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein each region has an associated address, wherein selecting one of the regions comprises using the selected region'"'"'s address as the predicted destination.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the computed metric score for a region is a probability value for transitioning into the region from a current position of the device.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein

when the current position of the device is within a first region in the set, the probability value for a second region is a conditional probability value for the device to leave the first region and enter the second region.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the conditional probability value is dependent on a time at which the probability value is being computed.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying the selectable option comprises displaying the selectable option without a user specifically requesting the selectable option.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination includes at least one of an estimated time of arrival, a physical distance to the destination, and an estimated duration of time to the destination.

16. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a navigation application for execution on a device, the navigation application comprising sets of instructions for:

identifying predicted destinations for the device;

without user intervention, providing an automated notification of a predicted destination;

upon selection of the automated notification, simultaneously providing an option to request a turn-by-turn prompting navigation presentation to the predicted destination and an option to request a non-prompting navigation presentation to the predicted destination; and

providing one of the navigation presentations upon the selection of the presentation, wherein a non-prompting navigation presentation does not provide individual maneuver instruction prompts at junctures along a route that is being navigated, but displays information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination of the route.

17. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the non-prompting navigation presentation provides a representation of the route and a representation of the device moving along the route as the device moves along the route.

18. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the turn-by-turn prompting navigation presentation provides individual maneuver instruction prompts at junctures along the navigated route, wherein the maneuver instruction prompts include at least one of verbal prompts, graphical prompts and text prompts.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance includes at least one of an estimated time of arrival, a physical distance to the destination, and an estimated duration of time to the destination.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the non-prompting navigation presentation updates the displayed information as the device travels.

21. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the displayed information is based on the device traversing to the destination along the route, the navigation application further comprising sets of instructions for:

tracking the device as the device travels along the route;

determining when the device travels off the route;

identifying another route to the destination when the device travels off the route;

computing new information to display during the non-prompting navigation presentation based on the identified other route; and

displaying the newly computed information during the non-prompting navigation presentation.

22. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein,

the non-prompting navigation presentation displays the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination in a selectable first display area, and

the navigation application further comprises a set of instructions for switching, upon selection of the first display area, the non-prompting navigation presentation to the turn-by-turn navigation presentation.

23. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 22, wherein,

the turn-by-turn prompting navigation presentation displays maneuver instructions in a selectable second display area, and

the navigation application further comprises a set of instructions for switching, upon selection of the second display area, the turn-by-turn prompting navigation presentation to the non-prompting navigation presentation.

24. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16, the navigation application further comprising a set of instructions for receiving a configuration setting from a user to generally request notifications regarding predicted destination.

25. A device comprising:

a set of processing units; and

a non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a navigation application for execution by at least one of the processing units, the navigation application comprising sets of instructions for;

without user input, simultaneously providing a first option to request a first navigation presentation and a second option to request a second navigation presentation to a destination, wherein the first navigation presentation provides maneuver instruction prompts at junctures along a route to the destination, while the second navigation presentation does not provide maneuver instruction prompts at the junctures along the route but provides distance information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination as the device travels to the route;

displaying the first navigation presentation when the first option is selected; and

displaying the second navigation presentation when the second option is selected,

wherein both displayed first and second navigation presentations show a representation of the device traveling across a representation of the route.

26. The device of claim 25, wherein both displayed first and second navigation presentations are three-dimensional presentations that show the device representation traversing along the route representation in a three-dimensional scene.

27. The device of claim 25, wherein the three-dimensional presentation in the first navigation presentation is similar to the three-dimensional presentation in the second navigation presentation except that the first navigation presentation is accompanied with instruction prompts at the junctures along the route, while the second navigation presentation is not accompanied with instruction prompts.

28. The device of claim 25, wherein the maneuver instructions prompts include at least one of voice-instruction prompts, graphical-instruction prompts, and text instruction prompts.

29. The device of claim 28, wherein the graphical-instruction prompts include arrows to specify a direction that the device has to take at junctures along the route.

30. The device of claim 25, wherein the information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to the destination includes at least one of an estimated time of arrival, a physical distance to the destination, and an estimated duration of time to the destination.

31. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a navigation application for execution on a device, the navigation application comprising sets of instructions for:

presenting a turn-by-turn first navigation presentation that provides individual maneuver instructions at junctures along a route that is being navigated;

presenting a distance-only second navigation presentation that does not provide any navigational instructions along the navigated route but displays information regarding the device'"'"'s distance to a destination of the route;

wherein both navigation presentations display a same representation of the device moving along a same representation of the route as the device moves along the route to the destination.

32. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 31, wherein the navigation application further comprises sets of instructions for:

tracking a position of the device as the device travels along the route;

correlating the tracked position of the device to a location on the route in order to move the displayed representation of the device along the displayed representation of the route;

during either the first or second presentation, providing re-routing notification when the device travels off the route; and

based on the re-routing, presenting a representation of another route to the destination.

33. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 31, wherein,

the first navigation presentation presents the maneuver instructions in a selectable first display area, and

the navigation application further comprises a set of instructions for switching, upon selection of the first display area, the first navigation presentation to the second navigation presentation;

and

wherein, the second navigation presentation presents the distance information in a selectable second display area, and

the navigation application further comprises a set of instructions for switching, upon selection of the second display area, the second navigation presentation to the turn-by-turn first navigation presentation.