The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 19, 2016
Filed:
Sep. 30, 2012
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Guillaume A. Carbonneau, Alameda, CA (US);
Vincent Dumont, San Francisco, CA (US);
Anuj Dhamija, Cupertino, CA (US);
Denis Laprise, Saratoga, CA (US);
Okan Arikan, Mountain View, CA (US);
James A. Howard, Mountain View, CA (US);
APPLE INC., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
A process is provided that reduces the amount of data for a map tile that could not be displayed separately on the scale of that tile. The process generates an equivalent of the road data by rasterizing the vectors representing road segments lying within a tile and generating a connectivity mask that keeps track of which pixels are connected to which other pixels along the vectors. The process constructs an undirected graph. Each 'on' pixel of the undirected graph represents a vertex and the vertices are connected by edges generated from the connectivity graph, but without a set direction. The process traces the undirected graph to generate chains of connected road segments and takes the chains and simplifies them in order to reduce the amount of data that must be stored and transmitted for the tile in order to produce all the visible roads of the tile at that scale.