Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Navigation – Employing position determining equipment
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-14
2003-04-22
Black, Thomas G. (Department: 3663)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Navigation
Employing position determining equipment
C709S203000, C709S223000, C709S229000, C709S217000, C709S241000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06553310
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
The Internet provides a wealth of information that is readily available to users having access to the network. Because of the great number of information sources available, search engines and directories are commonly employed in an effort to identify, locate, access and retrieve information from sources via the Internet. However, the rapid expansion of information available via the Internet has sometimes hindered rather than helped a user searching for information, as the desired information is hidden or completely supplanted by the irrelevant. To the consternation of users, search engines often miss relevant information or are unable to parse through directories and web pages to focus a search and retrieve the most relevant information.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system for and method of identifying information pertinent to a user. A further need exists for a system and method that automatically identifies resources based on accessability to the user.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the invention is to incorporate topological criteria in identifying network available resources. The topological criteria may be in the form of the physical location of a user vis-a-vis a location of a desired resource or may include a data path topology for accessing resources closest on a data network. Location information about the user is automatically supplied and incorporated into a locally or remotely initiated and/or executed search for and of resources.
Another object of the invention is to provide an information rich navigation or “mobile concierge” service, automatically providing information from remote sources based on the location of the user. Features of the navigation system may include a graphical map display of geographical features such as roads, streets, cities, airports, etc., augmented by facility information, such as rest stops, points of interest, etc. The system may further obtain and display dynamically changing information, such as road conditions (e.g., accidents, vehicular congestion, police activity, construction, surface conditions, etc.) weather, local events, alerts, etc. The information may be graphically displayed as part of a moving map and/or provided as text. As applicable, other means of presentation may also be employed, such as audio playback of sound files or speech resultant from local or remote text-to-speech conversion of information.
The invention provides enhanced search results of resources by including user location information criteria to select resources based on availability and accessability to the user. According to one aspect of the invention, user location information is provided to a server which prioritizes information retrieval and resource identification based on proximity. Such proximity may include physical location with respect to the requestor or network accessibility wherein resources traversing a minimal span of a network or subnetwork are identified in preference to more distantly connected resources. Proximity may be calculated directly (e.g., great circle distance between map coordinates or link distance between network nodes) or as distance to the resource (e.g., travel time, time for detour from route, total time to transfer data, bandwidth, path cost distance, etc.) One embodiment includes implementation of topological criteria using either client or server facilities, or both. Thus, a server may solicit or otherwise obtain location information from a client, such as the location of a user, location of a desired resource, routing or route of travel, etc., and use the location information to identify resources (e.g., shopping and service facilities, Internet servers and mirror sites, etc.) satisfying topographical criteria in addition to other search criteria, such as having selected key words (e.g., crawler based searches), falling within specified classes or types of resources (e.g., directory based listings), etc.
In the case of portable devices, the invention combines the position identifying capability of GPS (Global Positioning System) with the information available via the Internet. This provides a unified device that uses present position to determine distances to points of interest identified using information available on the Internet. Thus, the invention incorporates remotely accessible information into a positionally relevant display to provide enhanced maps, text, and other forms of information in a mobile environment. The remotely accessible information may be obtained, for example, via the Internet. According to a feature of the invention, the system may access a device specific resource to obtain device program database updates and to provide supplementary information about road conditions, local points-of-interest, etc. According to another feature, a system according to the invention automatically searches Internet sites and resources for information pertinent to a present position of a vehicle or mobile user by employing search engines and other information retrieval agents and automatic hyperlink following features.
According to an aspect of the invention, a method of identifying information based on topological criteria include identification of information to be retrieved based on topological criteria. A search is conducted of a resource (e.g., database(s)) for the class of information also satisfying the topological criteria. The class of information may be identifiable by a key (e.g., indicative of a category of information such as weather statistics for an area or of a facility such as local accommodations, restaurants, etc.) The topological criteria may include a location of a requestor so that the search may be centered on that location; the location of some remote site such as a planned destination; or a route of travel. The key and location are transmitted to a remote server and a result of the search (i.e., a reply) is returned to the requestor.
According to a feature of the invention, communications is established with the resource using a communications network wherein the location is relative to a topology of the communications network. Thus, for example, a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN) or the Internet may be used to access a resource with the location of the resource on the network relative to the requestor being a criteria for selecting a resource (e.g., server or other network node).
According to another feature of the invention, communications is established with the resource and target data associated with respective physical facilities is returned in response to the key and the topological criteria wherein the location is relative to a geographic (i.e., map) location of either the requestor or that of the physical facilities. The physical facilities may be identified by respective street addresses or other form of addressing scheme including ordered pairs of latitude and longitude values, zipcode, zip+4, telephone number, etc.
According to another aspect of the invention, location information is communicated to a remote server using a common gateway interface (CGI.) The CGI provides for automatic transmission of client location information using, for example, pre-stored address data contained in a web browser “cookie”. Alternatively, the CGI may be used to transmit information entered into a form page by a user. Geographic search criteria may be defined based on the topological criteria. A list of facilities having the class of information and satisfying the topological criteria is transmitted back by the server to the client.
According to another aspect of the invention, the resource may be a remote database of destinations to which to travel. Thus, identifying a topological criteria may include determining a current location and searching the database. The search may include selecting those destinations satisfying a first proximity criteria to identify candidate destinations. The proximity criteria may include line-of-sight (i.e., great circle distance) between points such as the current location and the location of the destination. An alternative c
Black Thomas G.
Hewlett--Packard Company
To Tuan C
LandOfFree
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