Patent ID: 11867519
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 12:
13. A computing device for generating a set of navigation directions according to road surface types of road segments, the computing device comprising:
one or more processors; and
a non-transitory computer-readable memory coupled to the one or more processors and storing instructions thereon that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing device to:
train a machine learning model for identifying road surface types of road segments using (i) a plurality of images of road segments, and (ii) indications of road surface types for each of the plurality of images of road segments;
receive a request for navigation directions for a vehicle from a starting location to a destination location;
identify a set of candidate routes for navigating from the starting location to the destination location;
for each road segment within each candidate route in the set of candidate routes, determine a road surface type for the road segment, wherein the road surface type for at least one of the road segments is determined by:
applying visual features of the road segment to the trained machine learning model;

select a route from the set of candidate routes based at least in part on the road surface types of the road segments within each candidate route; and
provide a set of navigation directions for navigating from the starting location to the destination location via the selected route.