Patent ID: 9558658
Date: 2017-01-31
CPC Classifications: G08G

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: determining a historical or statistical relationship between a first probe type and a second different probe type, wherein the first probe type comprises an abundant probe of a first transportation mode, wherein the second different probe type comprises a deficient probe of a second different transportation mode; providing a real time probe information estimate based on collected probe data corresponding to the abundant probe, wherein the real time probe information estimate relates to a location, travel time or speed of the abundant probe, wherein the probe data corresponding to the abundant probe is received from a plurality of probe data collection devices, each probe data collection device being installed onboard a vehicle corresponding to the first transportation mode, and wherein each probe data collection device is configured to provide at least one of latitude, longitude, speed, or heading of the corresponding vehicle; and converting, with a probe transformation server, probe information corresponding to the abundant probe type to probe information corresponding to the deficient probe by using the determined relationship and based on at least the real time probe information estimate, in order to estimate a location, travel time, or speed for the transportation mode corresponding to the deficient probe type; wherein: when the abundant probe type is a transit bus transportation mode, the method further comprises: identifying bus specific probe data; and prior to providing the real time probe information estimate, suppressing the bus specific probe data collected by a probe data collection device onboard a transit bus in order to remove noise in the probe data, wherein the bus specific probe data comprises (a) probe data collected by the probe data collection device onboard the transit bus when the transit bus is located within a threshold distance of a bus stop and (b) probe data collected by the probe data collection device onboard the transit bus when the transit bus is in a bus only lane, the threshold distance being a predetermined distance, and wherein the bus specific probe data is identified based on archived bus stop and bus only lane data accessible to the probe transformation server.