Patent ID: 9541413
Date: 2017-01-10
CPC Classifications: G01C

Claim:
1. A processing device implemented method of estimating one or more attributes of a virtual journey along a route between a start location and a destination location, wherein the virtual journey is a journey that has not been made by a mobile device, but which is constructed from journey data indicative of a plurality of journeys which have been made by one or more mobile devices, comprising: selecting, by the processing device, a plurality of mobile device journey data, each said mobile device journey data comprising data indicative of the location of the mobile device that was obtained from the mobile device at a plurality of times as the mobile device traveled along a route, wherein at least a portion of the route corresponds to a portion of the route between the start location and the destination location of the virtual journey, and wherein at least one distal or temporal separation exists in the plurality of mobile device journey data, each distal separation being a gap in location between two corresponding sequential mobile device journey data where neither of the corresponding sequential mobile device journey data includes journey data, and each temporal separation being a separation in time between two corresponding sequential mobile device journey data for which neither of the corresponding sequential mobile device journey data includes journey data; determining, by the processing device, virtual journey data by concatenating the selected plurality of mobile device journey data, said concatenating comprising extrapolating said selected plurality of mobile device journey data for the at least one distal or temporal separation, the extrapolating comprising forming a substantially continuous virtual journey by generating estimated journey data for the at least one distal or temporal separation; and determining, by the processing device, one or more attributes of the virtual journey data.