Mftb Holdco, Inc.

Zillow, Inc.

Will Adrian Hutchcroft

Yuguang Li

Ivaylo Boyadzhiev

Naji Khosravan

Manjunath Narayana

Sing Bing Kang

Christopher J Buehler

Zhiqiang Wan

Negar Nejatishahidin

Yu Yin

Pierre Moulon

Yujie Li

Techniques are described for automated operations to analyze visual data from images acquired in multiple rooms of a building to generate multiple types of building information (e.g., to include a floor plan for the building), such as by simultaneously or otherwise concurrently analyzing groups of three or more images having at least pairwise visual overlap between pairs of those images to determine information that includes global inter-image pose and structural element locations, and for subsequently using the generated building information in one or more further automated manners, with the building information generation further performed in some cases without having or using information from any distance-measuring devices about distances from an image's acquisition location to walls or other objects in the surrounding room.

Automated inter-image analysis of multiple building images for building floor plan generation

Techniques are described for computing devices to perform automated operations related to using images acquired in a building as part of an automated generation process of a floor plan or other mapping information for the building, in some cases without using depth information from depth-sensing equipment about distances from the images' acquisition locations to objects in the surrounding building, and for subsequent use in further automated manners, such as controlling navigation of mobile devices and/or for display to end users in a corresponding graphical user interface. The automated analysis and assessment of the building images may, for example, include incrementally generating partial versions of the mapping information, determining acquisition instructions related to further acquisition of additional images and/or other types of data (e.g., to reduce uncertainty associated with portions of the partial mapping information or otherwise obtain missing data), and providing corresponding guidance in or more manners.

Automated tools for incremental generation of building mapping information

Techniques are described for automated operations to analyze visual data from images acquired in multiple rooms of a building to generate one or more types of building information (e.g., global inter-image pose data, a floor plan for the building, etc.), such as by simultaneously or otherwise concurrently analyzing groups of three or more images having at least pairwise visual overlap between pairs of those images to determine information that includes global inter-image pose and structural element locations, and for subsequently using the generated building information in one or more further automated manners, with the building information generation further performed in some cases without having or using information from any distance-measuring devices about distances from an image's acquisition location to walls or other objects in the surrounding room.

Automated inter-image analysis of multiple building images for building information determination

Techniques are described for automated operations to analyze visual data from images acquired in multiple rooms of a building to generate multiple types of building information (e.g., to include a floor plan for the building), such as by using a trained neural network to jointly generate the multiple types of building information by combining visual data from pairs of the images, and for subsequently using the generated building information in one or more further automated manners, with the building information generation further performed in some cases without having or using information from any distance-measuring devices about distances from an image's acquisition location to walls or other objects in the surrounding room. The automated operations may include generating some types of building information with respect to each image pixel column, and other types of building information by combining data from both images of a pair.

Automated building information determination using inter-image analysis of multiple building images

Techniques are described for computing devices to perform automated operations to determine the acquisition locations of images, such as within a building interior based on automatically determined shapes of rooms of the building, and for using the determined image acquisition location information in further automated manners. The image may be a panorama image or of another type (e.g., a rectilinear perspective image) and acquired at an acquisition location in a multi-room building's interior, and the determined acquisition location for such an image may be at least a location on the building's floor plan and optionally an orientation/direction for at least a part of the image&#x2014;in addition, the automated image acquisition location determination may be further performed without having or using information from any depth sensors or other distance-measuring devices about distances from an image's acquisition location to walls or other objects in the surrounding building.

Automated determination of acquisition locations of acquired building images based on determined surrounding room data

Techniques are described for automated operations to analyze visual data combined from multiple images captured in a room to determine the room shape, such as by iteratively refining alignment of the multiple images' visual data into a common coordinate system until alignment differences satisfy one or more defined criteria, and for subsequently using the determined room shape information in further automated manners. The images may be panorama images in an equirectangular or other spherical format, and determined room shapes for one or more rooms of a building may be fully closed three-dimensional shapes and used to improve navigation of the building (e.g., as part of a generated building floor plan)&#x2014;the automated room shape determination may be further performed without having or using information from any distance-measuring devices about distances from an image's acquisition location to walls or other objects in the surrounding room.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Will Adrian Hutchcroft