Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Vicinity Corporation

Microsoft Corporation

Chris Stolte

Maneesh Agrawala

A system and method for making computer-generated maps includes a different scale factor for each road in a route. The scale factors are used to optimize the route map against a target function that considers factors such as the number of false intersections in the route and the number of roads falling below a minimum length threshold. A refinement technique such as simulated annealing is used to find a solution to the target function. Each road in the scaled map is rendered to provide a finished product having the appearance of a hand-drawn map. The finished product includes context roads that intersect the main route but are not part of the main route. Furthermore, the hand-drawn map is optimized to the characteristics of the viewport used to visualize the map.

System and method for abstracting and visualizing a route map

A system and method for placing an annotation or label in a route map in an appropriate grid cell are described. Initially, the route map is partitioned into an initial grid; composed of candidate grid cells, into which the annotation or label can be placed. If necessary, a search for grid cells having sufficient adjacent object free grid cells is conducted. When no candidate grid cells are found during the identifying or searching stages, a grid subdivision scheme subdivides a portion of the grid cells in the initial grid to form a new grid. Then, the identifying and searching steps are repeated using the new grid. The process also ranks multiple candidate cells based on a density of objects in bordering grid cells. The candidate grid cell having the lowest density of objects in bordering cells is selected as the appropriate candidate grid cell.

System and method for abstracting and visualizing a rout map

A system and method for making computer-generated maps includes a different scale factor for each road in a route. The scale factors are used to optimize the route map against an objective function that considers factors such as the number of false intersections in the route and the number of roads falling below a minimum length threshold. The position of each label corresponding to a road in the map is selected from a continuous range of possible positions by refinement against a target function that minimizes the number of roads, labels and annotations the label intersects as well as the distance between the label and the center of the road corresponding to the label. A refinement technique such as simulated annealing is used to find a solution to the target function. Each road in the scaled map is rendered to provide a finished product having the appearance of a hand-drawn map.

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Stanford, CA, United States of America

Chris Stolte