Patent ID: 8805118

Claim:
A method of aligning raster data and vector data, comprising: receiving, by one or more processors, raster data and a set of approximate vectors of vector data associated with features within the raster data; identifying, by the one or more processors, directions of the approximate vectors and grouping the approximate vectors into one or more directional chunks based on their directions; defining, by the one or more processors, search areas of the raster data for each directional chunk of the one or more directional chunks, each search area of the search areas encompassing at least one approximate vector of the set of approximate vectors; detecting, by the one or more processors, a road feature from said each search area and at least one approximate vector; generating, by the one or more processors, a translation vector and a confidence ratio from the detected road feature, wherein generating the translation vector comprises calculating the translation vector in accordance with: cost ( r , α ) = ∑ i = 1 I ⁢ ∑ j = 1 J i ⁢ W i , j ⁡ ( L i , j - r ⁢ ⁢ cos ⁡ ( α - θ i ) ) 2 wherein (r,α) represents the translation vector of length equal to r and direction equal to α, cost(r,α) represents a target cost function, W i,j represents a signal weight of the j th vector of direction equal to θ i , L i,j represents a location of the j th vector of direction equal to θ i , I represents a total number of different directions identified within said each directional chunk, J i represents a total number of possible road feature locations identified for direction θ i , and i and j represent summation indices; and aligning by the one or more processors, the raster data for said each search area with the at least one approximate vector using the translation vector.