Patent ID: 11954907
Assignee: X DEVELOPMENT LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H  Y | IPC G  H

Claim 19:
20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that are operable, when executed by one or more computers, to cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:
obtaining a set of surface elements (surfels), wherein each surfel of the set of surfels represents a portion of a surface of an object in a geographic region and comprises surfel attributes including:
a three-dimensional coordinate location of the surfel;
a normal vector defining an orientation of the surface of the object at the three-dimensional coordinate location; and
a shape defined by two or more axes;

selecting, from the set of surfels, one or more surfels that each satisfies criteria for representing a portion of a surface of an electric grid wire, including determining, for each of the selected one or more surfels, that:
a first axis of the two or more axes defining the shape of the surfel is greater than a second axis of the two or more axes; and
an angle between the first axis and the ground surface is less than a threshold angle;

generating a representation of the electric grid wire from the selected one or more surfels; and
adding the representation of the electric grid wire to a virtual model of an electric grid.