WiFi-based indoor positioning and navigation as a new mode in multimodal transit applications

• US 9,970,776 B2
• Filed: 04/01/2016
• Issued: 05/15/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Original Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Inventors: Sankaradas, Murugan, Rao, Kunal, Chakradhar, Srimat
• Primary Examiner(s): Black, Thomas G
• Assistant Examiner(s): Louie, Wae L
• Application Number:
  US15/088,352
• Publication Number:
  US 20160298978A1
• Time in Patent Office: 774 Days
• Field of Search: 701465, 701468, 707722, 707769, 715234
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3423 Multimodal routing, i.e. combining two or more modes of transportation, where the modes can be any of, e.g. driving, walking, cycling, public transport

Abstract

A system for planning a trip includes heterogeneous data sources including map data, traffic information, vehicle trace data, weather reports, social media data, commuter feedback data, GIS data, travel time data; a stream analytics engine coupled to the heterogeneous data sources; a batch analytics engine coupled to the heterogeneous data sources; and a multi-modal journey planner coupled to the stream analytics engine and the batch analytics engine, the multi-modal journey planner processing indoor travel information and providing real-time updates while a journey is under progress, the multi-modal journey planner providing a journey time forecast as the journey time reflects indoor travel time.

Claims

1. A system for planning a trip, comprising:

heterogeneous data sources including map data, traffic information, vehicle trace data, weather reports, social media data, commuter feedback data, GIS data, and travel time data;

a stream analytics engine coupled to the heterogeneous data sources;

a batch analytics engine coupled to the heterogeneous data sources;

a multi-modal journey planner coupled to the stream analytics engine and the batch analytics engine, the multi-modal journey planner processing indoor travel information and providing real-time updates while a journey is under progress, the multi-modal journey planner providing a journey time forecast as the journey time reflects indoor travel time;

an indoor positioning system with navigation capability integrated into the multimodal journey planner that allows indoor delays to be automatically factored into multimodal journey plans; and

a module to perform dynamic route updates in response to traffic anomalies like accidents, road closures or congestion.

2. The system of claim 1, comprising a preprocessor coupled to the heterogeneous data sources to manage data characteristics of different data streams.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the preprocessor considers frequency of availability over time and adjusting the frequency to match rates across different streams before performing analytics.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the preprocessor handles data integration, data transformation, spatial interpolation, feature extraction and clustering.

5. The system of claim 2, comprising responding in real-time based on input events.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the preprocessor performs data integration, data transformation, spatial interpolation, feature extraction and clustering of user data.

7. The system of claim 2, comprising a display showing a commuter real-time information on one or more modes in a transit path.

8. The system of claim 1, comprising modules for handling streaming input data from various data sources and serving real-time applications.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein recent input data is stored in a streaming data buffer and is used in conjunction with the models from the batch framework to serve real-time applications.

10. The system of claim 1, comprising modules and engines in the streaming analytics engine including real-time sensor agents, a correlation engine and a prediction engine.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the engines are run periodically and results are updated to reflect the latest changes in the input data.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the batch analytics engine comprises multiple engines for offline processing of transportation data.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the outputs of the engines, along with the raw input data, are fed into a batch data store visible to the system and the application layer.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the multi-modal journey planner generates alternate mode or route recommendation based on real-time travel conditions while the journey is under progress.

15. The system of claim 1, comprising a real-time data store with a real-time data store layer for exploratory and on the fly analytics directly on the streaming data.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the real-time data store is column-oriented and distributed with an advanced indexing structure for exploration of streaming in sub-millisecond latencies.

17. The system of claim 1, comprising a batch data store, wherein incoming data from sources are archived in a batch data store.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the heterogeneous mix of data includes map data, traffic information, vehicle trace data, weather reports, social media data, commuter feedback data, GIS data, travel time data.

19. The system of claim 1, comprising an indoor wireless area network positioning system.