Patent ID: 9257041
Filing Date: 2016-02-09
CPC Classification: G08G

Claim Text:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving information about prior road traffic flow conditions at multiple prior times for an indicated portion of a road having a plurality of locations, the indicated portion of the road having one or more traffic flow obstructions at one or more of the plurality of locations that reduce traffic flow at those one or more locations; automatically generating, by one or more programmed computing systems, a historical travel profile of the indicated portion of the road based at least in part on the received information about the prior road traffic flow conditions, the generated historical travel profile indicating differing representative traffic flow conditions for a plurality of distinct combinations of the plurality of locations and of multiple time periods; obtaining information about an actual travel path of a vehicle that previously passed by the plurality of locations of the indicated portion of the road, the obtained information indicating actual traffic flow conditions of the vehicle at a subset of two or more of the plurality of locations of the indicated portion of the road and not indicating actual traffic flow conditions of the vehicle at other locations of the plurality of locations, wherein the other locations include locations between the two or more locations of the subset that the vehicle passed by without a device associated with the vehicle generating a corresponding data sample; automatically calculating, by at least one of the programmed computing systems, expected traffic flow conditions of the vehicle as it previously passed the other by fitting the actual travel path of the vehicle to the representative traffic flow conditions indicated by the generated historical travel profile; and providing one or more indications of the automatically calculated expected traffic flow conditions of the vehicle.