System and method for location annotation employing time synchronization

• US 20040192343A1
• Filed: 01/28/2003
• Published: 09/30/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Planeteye Company ULC
• Original Assignee: Planeteye Company ULC
• Inventors: Toyama, Kentaro
• Application Number:
  US10/353,314
• Publication Number:
  US 20040192343A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

A system and method for identifying and/or annotating location for a desired event. This location annotation system and method presumes the existence of two components. The first is a location history (a record of a person, object, or other entity'"'"'s location history, with locations of the person, object or entity time-stamped so that the record contains location information for a particular time or times). The second component is a set of one or more documents which are time-stamped. The time-stamp is typically meaningfully related to a critical event in the lifetime of the document (e.g., creation time, modification time, and so forth). A document can be any electronic entity, regardless of its permanence or the means by which it is stored. Given the two discussed components, the location annotation system and method consists of a variety of methods for processing the time stamps of the document(s) to be annotated with the location history such that documents can be associated with the location at which critical events, or other events of interest, in the document lifetime took place.

Claims

1. A process for associating location information to an electronic document, comprising the following process actions:

inputting a record of an entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history;

inputting one or more target documents which are time-stamped, with the time-stamp being meaningfully related to at least one event of interest in the lifetime of the target document; and

associating said time of said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event of interest occurred.

2. The process of claim 1 further comprising the following process action:

storing said obtained location for later access.

3. The process of claim 2 wherein storing said obtained location comprises one of:

storing said obtained location in the target document as metadata, and storing said obtained location in a database and associated with the target document.

4. The process of claim 1 further comprising the following process action:

computing the location information each time location information about the target document is requested.

5. The process of claim 4 further comprising the process action of:

displaying the location information.

6. The process of claim 5 wherein the process action of displaying the location information comprises displaying the location information on a map.

7. The process of claim 1 wherein the process action of associating said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event occurred comprises:

determining the time in the location history with a time closest to the time of the event of interest; and

associating said location corresponding to the time in location history with a time closest to the time of the event of interest.

8. The process of claim 1 wherein the process action of associating said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event occurred comprises:

determining the time in the location history with a time closest to the time of the event of interest but no later than the event of interest; and

associating said location corresponding to the time in location history with a time closest but no later than the time of the event of interest.

9. The process of claim 1 wherein the process action of associating said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event occurred comprises:

determining the time in the location history with a time closest to the time of the event of interest but no earlier than the event of interest; and

associating said location corresponding to the time in location history with a time closest but no earlier than the time of the event of interest.

10. The process of claim 1 wherein the process action of associating said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event occurred comprises the process actions of:

interpolating a location corresponding to a time in the location history corresponding to a time equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of the event of interest; and

associating said location corresponding to said interpolated the time in said location history with a time equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of the event of interest.

11. The process action of claim 10 the process action of interpolating a location comprises using one of the following interpolation techniques:

linear interpolation;

spline-based interpolation;

curve fitting;

and regression.

12. The process of claim 1 wherein the process action of associating said event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event occurred comprises the process actions of:

extrapolating a location corresponding to a time in the location history corresponding to a time equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of the event of interest; and

associating said location corresponding to said extrapolated the time in said location history with a time equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of the event of interest.

13. The process action of claim 12 the process action of extrapolating a location comprises using one of the following interpolation techniques:

linear extrapolation;

spline-based extrapolation;

curve fitting and regression, followed by extrapolation; and

model-based extrapolation.

14. The process of claim 1 further comprising the following process, actions:

inputting at least one additional record of another entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history;

determining the record of the entity'"'"'s whose time-stamped location history is closest to said time of interest; and

associating said time of event of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history closest to said time of interest to obtain the location where the event occurred.

15. The process of claim 1 further comprising the following process actions:

inputting at least one additional record of at least one additional entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history;

determining the time offset between each record of each entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history compared to a reference time; and

ordering each record relative to said reference time using said time offset.

16. The process of claim 1 wherein said location history further comprises at least one of:

source of the location history;

reliability of the source of location history;

nearness in time of available location history;

entity with which location history was associated;

circumstances under which location history was taken; and

the location-association algorithm used with its relevant parameters

17. The process of claim 15 further comprising the process action of analyzing both the location history and the at least one target document to determine the optimal offset in time.

18. The process of claim 1 further comprising the process action of:

determining a constraint as to how far the time-stamp in said location history can be from the time of event of interest to determine a valid location; and

indicating that the obtained location is invalid if the location history does not contain a record within the constraint.

19. A system for associating location information with a document, the system comprising:

a general purpose computing device; and

a computer program comprising program modules executable by the computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,

input a document set, said document set having one or more documents with time tags, and a record of at least one entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history, said location history including a set of time-location pairs and being related to an event occurring relative to a document in said document set, and;

associate a time of interest of said one or more documents in said document set with said at least one entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where at least one document event occurred.

20. The system of claim 19 wherein the module to associate said time of interest of said one or more target documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where at least one event occurred comprises sub-modules to:

interpolate a location corresponding to a time in the location history equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of interest; and

associate said location corresponding to said interpolated time in said location history with a time equal to or within a prescribed range of the time of the event of interest.

21. The system of claim 20 wherein the sub-module to interpolate location uses at least one of the following:

linear interpolation;

spline-based interpolation; and

curve fitting.

22. The system of claim 20 wherein the sub-module to interpolate location uses a model to perform said interpolation.

23. The system of claim 22 wherein said model employs at least one of:

a generative model,

a rule-based model,

a probabilistic model,

a statistical model,

a calendar-based model,

a frequency-based model, or

any model that encodes the location history and location patterns of the modeled entity.

24. The system of claim 19 wherein a document is any electronic entity regardless of its permanence or the means by which it stored.

25. The system of claim 24 wherein said electronic entity is one of:

a file;

a portion of a file;

a database entry;

or

a temporary data structure which may never be saved to disk.

26. The system of claim 19 wherein said document is one of:

a photograph;

an image file;

a text document;

a presentation;

a music file;

or

a video.

27. The system of claim 26 wherein said location history is one of:

a list of global positioning system coordinates, together with time stamps;

a list or database of place names, together with time stamps or intervals;

a portable computing device wireless hub location, together with time stamps;

a location history obtained by a cellular telephone'"'"'s triangulated position based on the strength of the signal from nearby cell transmitters, together with corresponding time stamps;

a collection of time stamped documents which are themselves location stamped; and

a combination of one or more of the above.

28. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for correlating location information with a document, said computer executable instructions comprising modules for:

inputting a record of an entity'"'"'s time-stamped location history;

inputting one or more documents which are time-stamped, with each time-stamp being meaningfully related to an event of interest in the lifetime of the document; and

associating said time of said event of interest of said one or more documents with said entity'"'"'s location history to obtain the location where the event of interest occurred.

29. The computer-readable medium of claim 28 wherein a confidence value is calculated with respect to said entity'"'"'s location history and wherein said confidence value is used to estimate the accuracy of the location where the event of interest occurred.

30. The computer-readable medium of claim 29 wherein said confidence value is used to determine the validity of the location where the event occurred.

31. The computer-readable medium of claim 28 wherein a precision estimate is calculated with respect to said entity'"'"'s location history and wherein said precision estimate is used to estimate the precision of the location where the event of interest occurred.

32. The computer-readable medium of claim 29 wherein said confidence value is used to determine the validity of the location where the event occurred.