Method and apparatus of providing street view data of a real estate property

• US 9,311,397 B2
• Filed: 03/09/2013
• Issued: 04/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Visual Real Estate Incorporated (California Gold Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Visual Real Estates Incorporated
• Inventors: Meadow, William D., Gordie, Randall A. Jr.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Kimbinh T
• Application Number:
  US13/791,953
• Publication Number:
  US 20130182108A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,130 Days
• Field of Search: 345/419, 345/420
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/50 of still image data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/587 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/787 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• 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 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0278 Product appraisal
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0629 for generating comparisons
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/16 Real estate
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 17/05 Geographic models
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 17/20 Finite element generation, e.g. wire-frame surface description, tesselation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 19/006 Mixed reality object pose determination, tracking or camera calibration for mixed reality G06T7/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/4038 Image mosaicing, e.g. composing plane images from plane sub-images
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/698 : for achieving an enlarged field of view, e.g. panoramic image capture
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/28 : Mobile studios
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/18 : Closed-circuit television [CCTV] systems, i.e. systems in which the video signal is not broadcast
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/181 : for receiving images from a plurality of remote sources

Abstract

Video drive-by data provides a street level view of a neighborhood surrounding a selected geographic location. A video and data server farm incorporates a video storage server that stores video image files containing video drive-by data corresponding to a geographic location, a database server that processes a data query received from a user over the Internet corresponding to a geographic location of interest, and an image processing server. In operation, the database server identifies video image files stored in the video storage server that correspond to the geographic location of interest contained in the data query and transfers the video image files over a pre-processing network to the image processing server. The image processing server converts the video drive-by data to post-processed video data corresponding to a desired image format and transfers the post-processed video data via a post-processing network to the Internet in response to the query.

Claims

1. A method for providing a street level image associated with a first real estate property, the method comprising:

(a) receiving image data into a server farm comprising multiple processing devices at a single location, said image data captured by a camera with a field of view oriented at street level towards a point calculated to be a centroid of the first real estate property parcel;

(b) receiving a first request comprising into the server farm comprising multiple processing devices at a single location, wherein the first request is received across a digital communications network;

(c) determining image data captured by a camera with a field of view oriented at street level towards the point calculated to be a centroid of the first real estate property;

(d) providing user interface data, wherein the user interface data comprises;

overhead map data; and

a click through link associated with a first real estate property parcel indicated in the overhead map data, wherein the click through link initiates a second request for captured image data including the image data determined to be captured by a camera with a field of view oriented at street level towards a point calculated to be a centroid of the first real estate property parcel;

(e) receiving the second request into the server farm; and

(f) providing the captured image data including the image captured by the camera oriented at street level towards the point calculated to be the centroid of the first real estate property parcel and layer data associated with the first real estate property parcel.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the camera is a video camera, and wherein the captured image data includes multiple frames captured by the video camera.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the captured image data is captured by a plurality of cameras oriented at street level to the first real estate property, and wherein each of the plurality of cameras are approximately co-located.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first request of (b) is a webpage request made by a browser.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing of (d) is performed in response to receiving the first request in (b),wherein the overhead map data is used to display a map to a user, wherein the click through link is superimposed on the map and is visible to the user, and wherein the first real estate property is indicated on the map.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the second request of (e) is a webpage request made by a browser.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing of (f) is performed in response to receiving the second request in(d), wherein the layer data is superimposed on the captured image data, thereby generating a composite image, and wherein the composite image is displayed to a user.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the layer data includes information taken from the group consisting of:

geo-coded data, vector data, property county parcel data, landmark data or county propertyline data.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the captured image data associated with the first real estate property comprises an image that is centered on a centroid of a parcel on which the first real estate property is located.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the layer data includes information taken from the group consisting of:

Multiple Listing Services (MLS) data, record data, sale price data of the first real estate property, sale price data of a comparable real estate property, owner data, oraddress data of the first real estate property.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the camera is attached to a vehicle traveling at street level relative to the first real estate property, and wherein the captured image data comprises a plurality of images captured from discrete points traversed by the vehicle while the vehicle isin proximity to the first real estate property.

12. The method of claim 4, wherein the captured image data includes three hundred and sixty degree street views about the plurality of cameras.

13. The method of claim 1, the method further comprising:

(g) providing aerial data associated with the first real estate property, wherein the aerial data includes an overhead photo of the first real estate property.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the network in (b) is the Internet.