Identifying future location and providing path crossing indications

摘要

A user of a mobile device may use the technique to obtain future location-based situation awareness, e.g., a future location route displayed on the user's mobile device. That future location route comprises the user's future locations through time and space, e.g., a set of planned meetings at successive locations in a geographic area. A service that provides the user's mobile device with the future location route may also alert the user of potential threats to the user's planned activities, such as a restaurant being over-booked. On a permission basis, the user's mobile device may also receive a future location route for at least one other person associated with the user in a social network. The other person's future location route may be overlaid on the user's route so that one or both individuals receive advance notifications of their potential to have their respective paths “crossing” during a future time period.

主权项

1. An article comprising a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that stores a program, the program adapted to be executed by a machine to provide future location-based situation awareness to a user of a mobile device, the mobile device storing the user's calendar and contact information, the program comprising:
program code to receive calendar data; program code to receive contemporaneous location data; program code to use the received calendar and contemporaneous location data to calculate, as a series of points, the user's future locations through time and space; program code to use the series of points to determine a future location route to be traveled by the user; program code to generate data that represents the user's future location path between a departure time and an anticipated arrival time as reflected in the calendar data, the departure time being computed at least in part by subtracting a predicted duration of a trip along the future location route from the anticipated arrival time; and program code to receive user preference data entered on the display interface, the preference data identifying at least one social network relationship together with a distance or time threshold for identifying a path crossing opportunity with respect to the user's future location path; program code to correlate the user's future location path and a future location path of at least one other user matching the social network relationship and the distance or time threshold to generate second data; and program code to provide the second data to the mobile device to facilitate display on the mobile device display interface of the path crossing opportunity.