Portable housings for generation of building maps

摘要

A system and method are presented for producing a model of the interior of a building. The model is capable of receiving and dynamically incorporating input from various sources including, for example, existing static map data, data such as annotations and updates provided by persons on the scene but outside the building, and real-time data from sensors located on mobile persons or assets that are dynamically moving inside the building. In some cases, the moving persons or assets inside the building may carry a unit that emits sound or electromagnetic pulses, which reflect off the immediate surroundings in a particular room or portion of the building, and sense the reflected pulses. The reflections from relatively close features may arrive at the sensor more quickly than those from relatively distant features, so that temporal analysis of the reflected pulse may provide information about features in the building as a function of their distance away from the unit. Pulses may be emitted and received at multiple locations in a room or portion of the building. The reflected pulses may be analyzed, using specific time shifts that correspond to round-trip travel times in particular directions, so that the actual locations of features may be identified. By walking from room-to-room throughout the interior of a building and performing such analysis, much or all of the interior of a building may be mapped.

主权项

1. A device for dynamically producing an interior map of a building, comprising:
a housing capable of being affixed to a user as the user walks through the building; a beacon in the housing for emitting a series of sonic pulses proximate the housing, the emitted sonic pulses reflecting off features in the building proximate the housing to produce a series of reflected sonic pulses; a locating device in the housing for determining a dynamic location of the housing at or about the time the series of sonic pulses is emitted; a sensor in the housing for receiving the series of reflected sonic pulses, and for producing a received sonic pulse signal corresponding to at least selected emitted and received sonic pulses; and a processor for correlating the received sonic pulse signal with the corresponding housing locations, and extracting location information therefrom for at least selected features in the building.