Acquisition of navigation assistance information for a mobile station

摘要

Navigation assistance information for a mobile station is acquired based on a feature descriptor of an image of a visual beacon captured by the mobile station. The navigation assistance information includes locations of neighboring visual beacons, locations of wireless positioning resources; user environmental context information. The navigation assistance information may then be used to assist in navigating within the local environment. The visual beacon may be an artificial feature, such as a QR code or other type of matrix or bar code or a natural feature, such as a statute or architectural detail. The mobile station may request navigation assistance by transmitting the feature descriptor to a server. The server retrieves the navigation assistance information from a database based on the feature descriptor and optionally location information, which may also be provided in the navigation assistance request, and transmits the navigation assistance information to the mobile station.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
imaging a visual beacon within an environment with a mobile station; generating, with a processor, at least one feature descriptor for the visual beacon; obtaining, with the processor, locations of neighboring visual beacons associated with the feature descriptor, the neighboring visual beacons being different than the visual beacon imaged with the mobile station; and using the locations of neighboring visual beacons with the processor to assist in navigating within the environment by updating the mobile station position during navigation based on a location of a neighboring visual beacon of the neighboring visual beacons when the neighboring visual beacon is imaged by the mobile station.