Positioning, and encoded label generating

Embodiments of the present invention relate to a positioning method and a system thereof, an encoded label generating method and a system thereof. The present invention sets forth a solution of using encoded label to determine coordinate, so as to perform positioning. The positioning method, includes: acquiring a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; acquiring, by scanning a first encoded label, a second identification code and a first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label; and determining a first location in the map corresponding to the first coordinate in response to the second identification code matching with the first identification code.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 from Chinese Patent Application No. 201310106516.X filed Mar. 29, 2013, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to map positioning, and more specifically, to a positioning method and a system thereof, an encoded label generating method and a system thereof.

Description of Related Art

With continuous development of urban infrastructure, people's demand for precise positioning is ever increasing. In most public facilities such as airport hall, museum, shopping mall, underground park etc, people wish to precisely determine their location. Currently, in these large public facilities, maps are often provided at multiple locations and current location will be indicated for users to easily determine their location. However, this approach is not only expensive in implementation, but also not convenient for people to determine their location whenever necessary. GPS is currently the most popular positioning technology. GPS (Global Positioning System) is a satellite navigation based positioning system, with which user may realize all-weather, continuous, and real-time 3-dimensional positioning and speed measuring worldwide. Although GPS technology has been developed into a relatively mature industrial application in terms of outdoor positioning, when a GPS receiver works indoor, wireless signals from satellite are greatly attenuated due to impact of buildings, the GPS receiver can not receive sufficient satellite signal, so that indoor positioning can not be realized. Further, even at outdoor, if a user is not carrying a GPS positioning device (such as a handset capable of conducting GPS positioning), the user is unable to conduct GPS positioning. In order to solve the problem that GPS can not realize precise indoor positioning, many people set forth alternative solutions, including using signals such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), Infrared, WiFi, Ultra Wideband etc to conduct positioning. However, implementation cost of these positioning technologies are relatively high, for example, special signal transmitting devices need to be installed in a shopping mall, and requirement on user side is also relatively high, a user must hold a dedicated terminal to receive wireless signal.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In order to solve the problem in the art, inventor of the invention has inventively set forth a solution of using an encoded label to determine coordinate, so as to conduct positioning.

There is provided a positioning method, including: acquiring a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; acquiring, by scanning a first encoded label, a second identification code and a first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label; and determining a first location in the map corresponding to the first coordinate in response to the second identification code matching with the first identification code.

There is also provided a method for generating an encoded label, including: acquiring a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; receiving entry of a first location in the normalized map; calculating coordinate of the first location; and encoding the first identification code and coordinate of the first location to generate the first encoded label in the above positioning method.

There is also provided a positioning system, including: a first acquiring means configured to acquire a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; a second acquiring means configured to acquire, by scanning a first encoded label, a second identification code and a first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label; and a first determining means configured to determine a first location in the map corresponding to the first coordinate in response to the second identification code matching with the first identification code.

There is also provided a system for generating an encoded label, including: a third acquiring means configured to acquire a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; a second receiving means configured to receive entry of a first location in the normalized map; a calculating means configured to calculate coordinate of the first location; and an encoding means configured to encode the first identification code and coordinate of the first location to generate the first encoded label in the above positioning system.

According to an embodiment of the invention, in case that there is no GPS signal, no network and no wireless signal, a user can conduct positioning by only using a simple application. Further, implementation cost of the invention is lower, as compared to those technologies that require GPS signal or other wireless signals to conduct positioning, and a map distributor (such as store or museum etc) enables a user to conduct positioning by simply printing out several encoded labels.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Some preferable embodiments will be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which the preferable embodiments of the present disclosure have been illustrated. However, the present disclosure can be implemented in various manners, and thus should not be construed to be limited to the embodiments disclosed herein. On the contrary, those embodiments are provided for the thorough and complete understanding of the present disclosure, and completely conveying the scope of the present disclosure to those skilled in the art. Through the more detailed description of some embodiments of the present disclosure in the accompanying drawings, the above and other objects, features and advantages of the present disclosure will become more apparent, wherein the same reference generally refers to the same components in the embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 1shows a block diagram of an exemplary computer system/server12which is applicable to implement the embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 1shows a block diagram of an exemplary computer system/server12which is applicable to implement the embodiments of the present invention is shown. Computer system/server12as shown inFIG. 1is only illustrative and is not directed to suggest any limitation as to the scope of use or functionality of embodiments of the invention described herein.

The present invention suggests using an encoded label to determine coordinate, so as to conduct positioning on a map. In an illustrative application scenario of the present invention, a user in a museum needs to determine his/her location. Then, the user shoots a look-down map of certain floor in the museum at entrance of the museum, and when the user moves to certain exhibition room of the museum, he/she scans a 2-dimensional encoded label posted at entrance of that exhibition room with his/her mobile phone. This 2-dimensional encoded label contains therein coordinate information of location of that exhibition room. Current location of the user can be identified on the map by positioning that coordinate in the map.

FIG. 2shows a flowchart of a positioning method according to an embodiment of the present invention. In step201, acquiring a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map.

Wherein, the normalized map represents that edges and direction of that map have been determined. The procedure of normalizing a map is to determine edges and direction of the map in accordance with a unified rule.FIG. 3Cshows a diagram of a normalized map according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the map ofFIG. 3C, edges of the map have been determined by four right angle sides, and direction of the map has been determined by a solid arrow (the solid arrow points to west). The procedure of normalizing a map will be described below in detail.

The first identification code is used to identify the map. The first identification code may contain at least one of: number, alphabet, character, text, or other encode element. The first identification code can either be formed by a string of randomly generated numbers, or may comprise a series of meaningful characters, such as postal code of a region and name of a building or name of a company, etc.

The normalized map and the first identification code may be acquired in various ways. For example, the normalized map may be acquired by shooting a map posted in the museum (the map may be posted at entrance of the museum, at entrance of various stairs, at entrance of elevators or at other obvious locations) and conducting normalization on the map; also, the normalized map may be acquired by downloading the map from network in advance. Further, if capacity of the map is small enough, the normalized map may even be acquired by scanning an encoded label; of course, the normalized map may also be acquired through other manners.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, different maps have different identification codes, through these identification codes, it can be known an encoded label scanned in a subsequent step corresponds to a location in which map. For example, user's mobile phone may store therein a plurality of maps, and when scanning the first encoded label, a matching map can be automatically determined from the stored maps.

In step203, acquiring, by scanning a first encoded label, a second identification code and a first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label. The first encoded label may comprise various code types, such as 1-dimensional code, 2-dimensional code, etc. The first encoded label may, for example, be posted at doorpost, doorcase of entrance of an exhibition room or at any other desired location. By scanning the first encoded label, user can decode and acquire a second identification code indicated by the first encoded label and a first coordinate. The second identification code is used to identify the map. The second identification code may contain at least one of: number, alphabet, character, text. The second identification code can either be formed by a string of randomly generated numbers, or may comprise a series of meaningful characters, such as postal code of a region and name of a building or name of a company, etc.

The first coordinate represents coordinate of current location in the map, and may be represented in various manners, such as XY coordinate, radian coordinate, etc. If a user acquires the map by shooting, it is very likely that the map acquired by the user will have different size. Thus, to be able to accurately indicate coordinate of a location in the map, the location can be identified by relative coordinate. For example, for a map of 10 cm*10 cm, instead of using X=5 cm, Y=5 cm to identify centre of the map, the center is identified by using X=50%, Y=50%.

In the example of museum, the museum needs to determine location of each exhibition room in the map in advance, then encode this location to generate a first encoded label and post it outside of corresponding exhibition room. Many existing software are provided with functionality of scanning and decoding an encoded label; according to an embodiment of the present invention, the positioning method may utilize an existing encoded label scanning application to scan the encoded label to acquire encoded content; according to another embodiment of the present invention, the positioning method may comprise scanning feature of the encoded label.

In step205, determining a first location in the map corresponding to the first coordinate in response to the second identification code matching with the first identification code. The matching of the second identification code with the first identification code means that the location indicated by the scanned first encoded label is just the location in the map. Since a user may store a plurality of maps, what is needed first is to determine which map is the map indicated by the first encoded label. By takingFIG. 3Cfor example, assuming location of the five-pointed star is the first location, first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label posted at the first location is X=30%, Y=45%. In step205, position of the first location in the map will be restored through the acquired first coordinate X=30%, Y=45%. User will know his/her current location by viewing the first location in the map.

Although inFIG. 2, steps201,203,205are described in sequence, those skilled in the art will appreciated that, step201can be performed in parallel with step203, alternatively, step201can also be performed after step203. For example, a user may first scan the first encoded label, and then acquire the map and the first identification code, which will not affect the implementation of the present invention.

An embodiment of acquiring a normalized map in step201will be described in detail below with reference toFIG. 3A-FIG. 3C. In this embodiment, first, a map to be normalized will be acquired, wherein, the map to be normalized contains therein flags indicating edges and direction of the map, the map to be normalized has not been normalized; then, normalization is performed on the map to be normalized to determine edges and direction of the map.

Still taking a museum as an example for illustration,FIG. 3Ashows a diagram of a planar map of an existing museum (the map originates from website of Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/museum-map).FIG. 3Bis formed by indicating edges (represented by right-angle sides) and direction (represented by an arrow) on the map ofFIG. 3A.FIG. 3Bis the map to be normalized.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the step of acquiring a map to be normalized further comprises: acquiring the map by shooting. If a user acquires the map to be normalized by shooting, maps acquired by user by shooting from different angle, different distance, and different position will have different size, direction, and distortion degree. Thus, subsequent positioning procedure can not be conducted if edges and direction of the map are not indicated.

Any flags capable of describing edges and direction of a map can be used, for example, edges of a map may be described by arranging flags at 2 opposite angles, 3 angles, 4 angles, even more points (e.g., 4 middle points on 4 sides of the map), or may be described by arranging flags at 1 side, 2 sides, 3 sides, 4 sides or more sides of the map, or may be described by arranging flags at both angles and sides of the map. The flags for describing edges and direction of a map may be separated (as shown inFIG. 3B), or be combined with each other (for example, curves are arranged on side toward north in the map, and straight lines are arranged on sides toward other direction in the map; alternatively, round angle is arranged on the northeast angle of the map, and right angle is arranged on the other 3 angles in the map). The flag may be represented by at least one of: pattern, number, alphabet (e.g., alphabet N may be used to represent north), character, text.

If the user acquires the map to be normalized by shooting, simple image processing technology may be further utilized to perform normalization on the map to be normalized, thereby determining its edge and direction. A normalized map refers to a map whose edges and direction have been determined. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a normalized map may reserve flags of edges and direction of the map (as shown inFIG. 3C); according to another embodiment of the present invention, a normalized map may remove flags of edges and direction of the map. It should be appreciated that, coordinate axes XY shown by dashed line inFIG. 3Care merely illustrative, and do not mean that coordinate axes have to be added in the map. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the normalized map may remove pattern outside of edges of the map (as shown inFIG. 3C); according to another embodiment of the present invention, the normalized map may reserve pattern outside of edges of the map. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the step of performing normalization on the map to determine its edges and direction further comprises correcting distortion resulted from shooting the map, and then determining edges and direction of the corrected map.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the step of acquiring a first identification code further comprises: acquiring, by scanning a second encoded label, the first identification code indicated by the second encoded label. Thus, various advantages of an encoded label can be utilized, user does not have to memorize, enter or edit the complicated first identification code of the map, rather, user can acquire the first identification code by simply scanning the second encoded label. Similar to the first identification code, the second encoded label may also contain at least one of: 1-dimensional code, 2-dimensional code and other code. The encoding rule employed by the first encoded label may be consistent with or independent to that employed by the second encoded label. In one embodiment, the second encoded label may be included in the map to be normalized (as shown in left lower corner ofFIG. 3B); in another embodiment, the second encoded label may be separated from the map to be normalized. If the map to be normalized is acquired by shooting and the second encoded label is included in the map to be normalized, then scanning of the second encoded label may be combined with the process of shooting the map, for example, the second encoded label is scanned during shooting of the map. Of course, in other embodiments, scanning of the second encoded label may be performed separately.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the positioning method may further correlate the first location with time of acquiring the first encoded label. Further, the first location and the time of acquiring the first encoded label (e.g., time of scanning the first encoded label) may be simultaneously displayed in the map, alternatively, traveling track of the user may also be displayed in the map (for example, a line with arrow is used to describe a path of user from one location to another location). User may determine a location where he/she had been to through time, this will facilitate user in determining his/her traveling track or returning to the location where he/she had been to. Taking a parking structure for example, if user's parking location (i.e. first location) and time are recorded, it will help the user to return from current location to original parking location.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the positioning method may further comprise: receiving a destination location; and determining a path from the first location to the destination location. In this embodiment, the positioning method may be further used for navigation. If all paths of a map are known, then an actual path to the destination location may be indicated in the map. For example, paths of a map may be provided by the map provider, e.g., the museum will indicated in the map which is an exhibition hall and which is a road. Further, as another example, all paths of a map may be acquired by performing image analysis on the map (e.g., all places that are in yellow are roads). If all paths of the map are not known, then the above step of determining a path may comprise: indicating in the map a straight line path to the destination location.

FIG. 4shows a flowchart of an encoded label generating method according to an embodiment of the present invention. The method may help the map provider (such as a museum) to generate a first encoded label in a simple way. In step401, acquiring a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map. The normalized map and the first identification code here are the same as those above, and description of which will be omitted for brevity.

In step403, receiving entry of a first location in the normalized map. The entry may be at least one of: click, select through a check box, enter name or number of a first location (such as, enter number of an exhibition room) and other inputting manner. With this step, an encoded label may be generated in a simple way. For example, if a user wants to print out an encoded label of an exhibition room, the user just needs to directly click on location of the corresponding exhibition room in the map.

In step405, calculating coordinate of the first location. Since the normalized map has been acquired in step401, coordinate of the first location on the normalized map may be calculated in step405. As stated above, the coordinate may be represented in various manners, such as, XY coordinates, radian coordinates.

In step407, encoding the first identification code and coordinate of the first location to generate the first encoded label. The first encoded label is used to identify coordinate of the first location in the map and the first identification code of the map. Through operations of these several steps, an encoded label can be simply generated for the first location to be posted at the first location.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, acquiring a normalized map in step401further comprises: acquiring a map to be normalized; and performing normalization on the map to be normalized to label edges and direction of the map according to user's indication. For example, user identifies 4 vertex angles of the map and sides or angles in a certain direction through clicking; as another example, user circles edges of the map and designates its direction on the map, etc.

In sum, the positioning method according to an embodiment of the present invention is capable of achieving at least one of the following beneficial effects: (1) cost saving, for example, in the above case, the museum does not need to deploy any device for receiving and transmitting wireless signal, rather, the museum only needs to prepare an encoded label for each exhibition room; (2) does not depend on transmission of wireless signal, what is needed is to provide at user side a device capable of scanning an encoded label, while most current intelligent mobile phones can realize scanning of an encoded label, thus, the present invention is applicable in any circumstances, even in an underground parking lot where wireless signal can not be received; (3) simple and easy to be implemented; there is no complex operation, rather, a user can determine his/her location by simply scanning a first encoded label. Of course, other embodiments of the present invention may further achieve other beneficial effects, which have been described hereinbefore and will be omitted for brevity.

The positioning method and encoded label generating method in the present invention have been described hereinabove, and a positioning system and an encoded label generating system under the same inventive concept will be described below with reference toFIG. 5andFIG. 6, wherein same or corresponding implementation details will be omitted, since they have been described in detail and thoroughly hereinbefore.

FIG. 5shows a block diagram of a positioning system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The positioning system comprises a first acquiring means, a second acquiring means, and a first determining means. Wherein, the first acquiring means is configured to acquire a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map. The second acquiring means is configured to acquire, by scanning a first encoded label, a second identification code and a first coordinate indicated by the first encoded label. The first determining means is configured to determine a first location in the map corresponding to the first coordinate in response to the second identification code matching with the first identification code.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the first acquiring means is further configured to: acquire a map to be normalized, wherein the map to be normalized contains therein flags indicating edges and direction of the map; and perform normalization on the map to be normalized to determine edges and direction of the map.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, wherein, the first acquiring means is further configured to: acquire the map to be normalized by shooting.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, wherein, the first acquiring means is further configured to: acquire, by scanning a second encoded label, the first identification code indicated by the second encoded label.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the positioning system further comprises: a correlating means configured to correlate the first location with the time of acquiring the first encoded label.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the positioning system further comprises: a first receiving means configured to receive a destination location; and a second determining means configured to determine a path from the first location to the destination location.

FIG. 6shows a block diagram of an encoded label generating system according to an embodiment of the present invention, for generating the first encoded label in the above positioning system. The system comprises a third acquiring means, a second receiving means, a calculating means and an encoding means. Wherein, the third acquiring means is configured to acquire a normalized map and a first identification code for identifying the map; the second receiving means is configured to receive entry of a first location in the normalized map; the calculating means is configured to calculate coordinate of the first location; and the encoding means is configured to encode the first identification code and coordinate of the first location to generate the first encoded label.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the third acquiring means is further configured to: acquire a map to be normalized; and perform normalization on the map to be normalized to label edges and direction of the map according to user's indication.