KR20070028824A - System of map reporting and the method - Google Patents

Abstract

A system for reporting geographic information for a map and an operation method thereof are provided to display an image and the map corresponding to a position by capturing the image of the position with a plurality of camera attached to a vehicle, and storing the image and coordinates of the position. A GPS(Global Positioning System) receiver(102) receives position/time information from a GPS satellite. An input part(108) provides a user interface by including various kinds of function keys. The cameras(118,120) capture the surroundings by including an imaging sensor. An image database(136) stores the captured image. A map database(134) stores map data. A display part(110) displays the map data, the image, and an operation tool. A controller(140) calculates the current coordinates by using the location information received from the GPS receiver, extracts the map data of the current captured position from the map database, and makes the map data and the captured image displayed to the display part.

Description

System of map reporting and the method of operation

1 is a block diagram of a map site survey system according to the present invention.

Figure 2 is an example of image capture and synthesis using a first camera, a second camera.

3 is an exemplary view of an image-map synthesis table.

4 is a method of operation of the map site survey system according to the present invention.

5 is an image combining method using a first camera and a second camera.

* Description of the symbols for the main parts of the drawings *

102: GPS receiver 104: audio processor

106: microphone 108: input unit

110: display unit 112: image synthesizing unit

114: first image processor 116: second image processor

118: first camera 120: second camera

132: operation / user data 134: map data storage DB

136: video storage DB 138: audio storage DB

The present invention relates to a map field survey system for surveying geographic information, and to a system for photographing the surroundings using a plurality of cameras and storing and displaying the map with a corresponding location map.

Currently, the Car Navigation System (CNS) is equipped with a GPS positioning device mounted on various moving objects such as ships and aircrafts to check the current position and moving speed or determine a moving route. The GPS positioning device calculates the current position of the moving object by receiving radio waves representing latitude, longitude, altitude, etc. from a plurality of satellites belonging to the Global Position System (hereinafter, referred to as "GPS"). Afterwards, the map displays the map information including the current location to the driver.The GPS above orbits the earth twice a day at an altitude of 20,183 km and transmits a signal for the current position and a time when the coordinate signal is transmitted. 3 GPS satellites on each of the six orbits, spaced at a total of 18 (24 if including a spare satellite for each track), and then receiving signals transmitted from the GPS satellites using a GPS receiver. It is a device that can detect the position where GPS receiver exists by processing, and it transmits from 3 or more GPS satellites using GPS receiver which consists of GPS antenna and GPS receiver circuit. Is a device that detects a signal and detects its position (but in the case of three-dimensional position measurement, four or more GPS satellite signals are required.) The above-described general navigation device using GPS is a map displayed on a display screen. The current position of the moving object is calculated by using the information received from the GPS on the screen, and the moving direction of the moving object, the distance to the destination to be traveled, the current moving speed of the moving object, the route set before the driver, It provides the driver with various information necessary for driving such as displaying the optimal route of the destination branch.

However, despite this state-of-the-art vehicle navigation system, the navigation map displayed on the navigation device does not actively cope with the current situation of the road. That is, the road on which the vehicle runs frequently generates new roads due to numerous constructions and constructions, and the roads are closed due to the disappearance of existing roads or long-term construction, and various companies are created, changed, and transferred. In order to respond quickly to these changes, the on-site vehicle survey of the navigation manufacturer must be carried out at regular intervals. The on-site vehicle survey of the navigation manufacturer is performed by editing, adding, deleting, or modifying existing navigation map data directly on the spot by using various drawings made of paper, various research ledgers, and a portable computer. However, such field surveys require skillfully skilled investigators due to the nature of the survey, and typos, incorrect entries, and incorrect judgments generated in the field have a problem that cannot be verified by third parties. In addition, given the fact that conducting an on-site survey in an extremely malicious manner would not be able to inspect all the data examined, the quality of the data would enter the worst state, and drivers using this misleading navigation map would be quite You may be at risk. In addition, the existing vehicle on-site survey method is a risk of a car accident due to frequent stops for real-time editing / modification, there is a concern that may cause traffic jams. In addition, the conventional vehicle on-site survey method requires at least two people (investigator and driver), there is a problem in that various costs are increased due to the long time of the investigation.

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention has been conceived, and after storing the image taken while the vehicle with the camera is running with the position coordinates of the corresponding point, and displays the image with the map of the corresponding point in real time or later For the purpose. In addition, an object of the present invention is to provide a method of capturing and synthesizing images using two or more cameras for smooth image capturing in a vehicle traveling direction.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a GPS receiver for receiving location information and visual information from a GPS satellite, an input unit for providing an interface (UI) with a user including various function keys, and an optical image receiving peripheral image input. A camera having an input element capable of photographing surroundings, an image storage DB storing the photographed image, a map data storage DB storing map data, a display unit displaying map data, an image, and an operation means; After calculating the current position coordinates by using the position information from the GPS receiver, and includes a control unit for extracting the map data of the current photographing point to perform the display control with the camera image of the photographing point.

In addition, the operation method of the field survey system of the present invention, the process of entering the field survey mode for capturing the image in the vehicle traveling direction, the process of photographing the front and surrounding images using a plurality of cameras, and the GPS signal In the case of normal reception by determining whether the reception is normally performed, calculating a current location using the received GPS signal, displaying a map of the corresponding point, and in the image display mode in which the captured image is displayed, And store it in a memory and simultaneously display it together with the map.

Hereinafter, the detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description of the reference numerals to the components of the drawings it should be noted that the same reference numerals as possible even if displayed on different drawings. In addition, in describing the present invention, when it is determined that a detailed description of a related known function or configuration may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted. In addition, terms to be described below are terms defined in consideration of functions in the present invention, which may vary according to general practices of those belonging to the technical field of the present invention, and the definitions should be made based on the contents throughout the present specification.

In the embodiment of the present invention will be described taking a map field survey system having two cameras as an example. However, it will be apparent that the technical concept of the present invention can be equally applied not only to a map spot survey system having two cameras but also to a map spot survey system having one or a plurality of cameras as described above.

1 is a block diagram showing the internal configuration of a map site survey system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The above-described map field survey system refers to a system having a camera that takes a field image to perform addition / modification / editing of each content (eg, a road name, a store, a bank name, etc.) of a map used for navigation. In the following, the system of the present invention implemented for this purpose will be referred to as a map field survey system.

Referring to FIG. 1, the GPS receiver 102 performs a function of receiving location information (latitude, longitude, altitude) and time information from three or more GPS satellites through the GPS antenna 100, and the controller 140. Calculate the current position accurately by triangulation method of the position information received from three or more GPS satellites. GPS satellites transmit the latitude, longitude, and altitude of a moving map survey system through a satellite communication network. GPS signals from GPS satellites can be positioned anywhere on Earth using the Coarse Acquisition (C / A) code at the frequency of 1575.42 MHz, the L1 band. The GPS receiver 102 transmits the GPS signals (location information and time information) received from the plurality of GPS satellites to the controller 140.

The audio processor 104 performs a function of coding a received audio signal input from the microphone 106 using an audio codec. To this end, the audio processor 104 includes an audio codec capable of digitally processing analog voice.

The input unit 108 is provided with keys for inputting numeric and character information and function keys for setting various functions, and serves as an interface (UI) with a user. The input unit 108 may be implemented in the form of a key as described above, but as another embodiment, it will be apparent that the input unit 108 may be made of various types of operation panels such as a jog shuttle, a button, and a touch screen method.

The first camera 118, the second camera 120 is a camera sensor for capturing an image, and converts the photographed optical image signal into an electrical signal, the map field survey system through the camera sensor is a road, signage, building An image of the back and the like is photographed and transmitted to the first image processor 114 and the second image processor 116. The first camera 118 and the second camera 120 are attached to both front ends 202 and 204 of the vehicle, as shown in FIG. 2, to capture an image close to 180 degrees of the driver's position. In order to shoot an image, one camera is not enough, so two cameras (first camera and second camera) are used for shooting. In order to overcome the disconnection of the captured image, the first and second cameras 118 and 120 are photographed in real time to be a still image of 5 frames per second or 20 frames per second.

The first and second image processors 114 and 116 convert the image signals output from the first and second cameras 118 and 120 into frames. To this end, the first and second image processing units 114 and 116 include an image codec and perform a function of compressing or compressing the compressed frame to the original image frame in a predetermined manner. The image codec may be a JPEG codec, an MPEG4 codec, a wavelet codec, or the like. Referring to the operations of the first and second image processing units 114 and 116, the first and second image processing units 114 and 116 process the image signals output from the first and second cameras 118 and 120 in units of frames, thereby providing a first operation. Create a frame and a second frame, respectively. For example, the first image processing unit 114 generates an image captured by the first camera 118 installed on the left side of the vehicle as a first frame, and the second image processing unit 116 is provided on the right side of the vehicle. A function of generating an image photographed by the two cameras 120 as a second frame is performed.

The image synthesizing unit 112 performs a function of synchronizing and synthesizing the first and second frames output from the first image processing unit 114 and the second image processing unit 116. To this end, the image synthesizing unit 112 outputs the image data of the first frame and the second frame according to the characteristics and the size of the display unit. For example, when the display unit is composed of 512 * 384 (horizontal * vertical) pixels, the image synthesizing unit 112 that receives the first frame includes horizontal pixels of 0 to 300 pixels and vertical pixels of 0 to 200 pixels. The first frame is converted into the first synthesized frame. This assumes that the first frame is a frame photographed by the first camera installed on the left side of the vehicle, and performs conversion for displaying on the left side of the display unit of 512 * 384 (horizontal * vertical) pixels. Meanwhile, the second frame is converted into a second composition frame including the image synthesizer 112 that receives the second frame, horizontal pixels of 250 to 512 pixels, and vertical pixels of 190 to 384 pixels.

The image synthesizing unit 112 generates a combined frame of two combined forms by synthesizing the transformed first and second synthetic frames as described above, and is shown in FIG. 2 for a naturalness of overlapping portions of the image. As described above, it is necessary to have a duplicate image of a certain section. As described above, the method for generating the combined frame is not limited in the method, such as can be implemented by using various frame synthesis methods in addition to the above method.

The controller 140 calculates the exact position coordinates of the current map spot survey system by a triangulation method based on the position information received from the GPS receiver 102 based on the center of the earth E. In addition, the controller 140 retrieves the map unique number of the map data corresponding to the location coordinates and stores the map unique number in the operation / user data 132. In addition, the controller 100 controls each function unit to provide an algorithm for synthesizing the images input through the first and second cameras 118 and 120 to generate and store the synthesized image.

In addition, the controller 140 performs a function of generating an image-map composition table as shown in FIG. 3 by combining with the map of the current point photographed in addition to the combined frame. That is, the position coordinates of the combined frame generated by capturing the image are detected by the GPS receiver 102 to extract a map of the position coordinates from the map data storage DB, and generate a combined image-map composite table. The image-map composition table may be divided into an image sector 302, a map sector 304, and an operation sector 306. The image sector 302 is composed of images captured by first and second cameras. The map sector 304 displays a map of a location point of the currently displayed image, and the operation sector 306 displays a user interface (UI) serving as an input unit that interfaces with a user.

The display unit 110 is a display device formed of a liquid crystal device such as an LCD and performs a function of displaying the image-map composition table. In some cases, only an image or a map may be individually displayed. An example of display of an image-map synthesis table is shown in FIG. 3. On the other hand, the display unit 110 performs a function of displaying the location information and time information received from the GPS satellites.

The memory 130 includes an operation / user data 132, a map data storage DB 134, an image storage DB 136, and an audio storage DB 138. The operation / user data 132 is a map field survey system. Contains a booting and OS for controlling the general operation of the field, and is a field for storing data by user request generated during the operation of the map field survey system. The map data storage DB 134 is a database in which a navigation map for performing location guidance is stored, and a plurality of electronic maps divided into predetermined sections are stored. Each map stored in the map data storage DB 134 has a map unique number and corresponding location coordinates (longitude, latitude, and altitude), so that the controller 140 uses a map unique number or location coordinates to map a specific location. Can be used to call The image storage DB 136 is a database in which each image frame (first frame, second frame) photographed by the first camera and the second camera is stored together with the photographing position and the photographing time. In addition to each of these image frames, the image storage DB 136 also stores a combined frame generated by these synthesis. The audio storage DB 138 is a database in which audio input through the microphone 106 is stored.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a process in which a map field survey system synthesizes two images and displays only images captured by a camera with or without a map of a corresponding point according to GPS location information.

When the user performs an operation such as power ON and the like, the map field survey system is booted and enters a normal operation state (S402), the controller in the map field survey system determines whether the mode of the terminal is the field survey mode (S404). The on-site survey mode is a mode entered by a user's on-site survey start button, etc. The entry into the on-site survey mode is supplied with power to the operations of the first camera and the second camera provided in the map survey system, and the photographing driving is normally performed. It means. As a result of the site survey mode determination, when it is determined that the current state is the site survey mode, the controller 140 determines whether the GPS receiver 102 normally receives a GPS signal from the GPS satellite (S406). As a result of the determination, when it is normally received, the controller 140 calculates and calculates the current position coordinates (longitude, latitude, and altitude) using the location information of the corresponding GPS signal (S408). Thereafter, the map of the corresponding point according to the calculated current location coordinates is extracted from the map data storage DB 134 (S410) and displayed on the display unit 110 (S412). Extraction (S410) may be extracted using the map unique number according to the location coordinates, or may directly extract the map of the corresponding point using the location coordinates. The region where the extracted map is displayed is displayed in the map sector 304 as shown in FIG. In addition, the display unit 110 displays not only the map but also GPS received data such as location information and visual information received from a GPS satellite in an image sector or a map sector (S412).

After the display output (S412) of the map and the GPS reception data (S412), the controller 140 determines whether to display the image photographed by the first and second camera (S414). The determination is to determine whether the user selects an image output, and when there is an image display selection to be photographed, the image being photographed is displayed in the image sector 302 of the image-map synthesis table in real time (S416). The image display is a combination of the image output from the first camera and the image output from the second camera, and means displaying the combined frame synthesized by the image synthesizing unit. The controller 140 displays the composite image and also stores the corresponding image along with the corresponding location information in the image storage DB 136 (S418). The storage is to be stored for later use in modifying and editing the map by replaying the stored image. It will be apparent that the image storage DB 136 may store not only a composite image but also a first image photographed by a first camera and a second image photographed by a second camera.

On the other hand, as a result of determining whether the image display is selected, even if the image display is not selected, if the automatic display mode is set (S422), it is determined whether the vehicle is driving (S424) and has a process of automatically displaying and storing the image.

After displaying and storing the frame through the above processes, it is determined whether the operation of the map field survey system is finished (S420). As a result of the determination, if the operation is not finished, the above process is repeated to display and store the next image input from the camera.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a process of synthesizing and displaying an image by a controller.

First, when the first camera and the second camera are driven (S502), the controller 140 determines whether an image is normally input from the first camera 118 and the second camera 120 (S504). The determination of whether the image is normally input in step S504 is to determine whether the input image is defective. For example, when the input image is entirely black, the input image is determined to be defective. As a result of determination, when the input image is not a normal input, a camera driving error message is generated and displayed (S518) and the operation is terminated, so that the user may know that there is a problem in driving the camera.

On the other hand, when the input image is a normal input as a result of the determination, the first and second image processing units 114 and 116 digitally display the first image and the second image input from the first camera 118 and the second camera 120, respectively. The video signal is encoded into a first frame and a second frame (S506). The image synthesizing unit 112 generates the first and second synthesis frames for occupying the generated first and second frames by half of the size of the image sector of the display unit (S508). A combined frame combining the frames is generated (S510). If there is a video display selection request from the user (S512), the combined frame is displayed as a composite image on the display unit and the combined frame is stored in the image storage DB (S514). After the display and storage is performed, it is determined whether the camera is being driven (S516), the next image is input, the frame is processed, and the process of displaying and storing the composite image is repeated.

In the above description of the present invention has been described with respect to specific embodiments, such as a map site survey system, various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention is not to be determined by the embodiments described above, but will be apparent in the claims as well as equivalent scope.

As described above, the present invention, by real-time shooting the scene for the navigation map editing / creation in the memory to be used in the future, can reduce the stop for the map editing to reduce traffic congestion and reduce fuel costs It can work. In addition, the driver can drive at a speed of about 50 km without stopping without a separate investigator, and by using two cameras, the front of the vehicle can be photographed with an angle of view close to 180 degrees. have.

Claims (8)

A GPS receiver for receiving location information and time information from a GPS satellite; An input unit for providing an interface (UI) with a user, including various function keys, A camera capable of photographing the surroundings, having an optical input device receiving the surrounding image input; An image storage DB in which the photographed image is stored; Map data storage DB that stores the map data, A display unit on which map data, an image, and operation means are displayed; After calculating the current position coordinates using the location information from the GPS receiver, a control unit for extracting the map data of the current location to display control with the camera image of the location Map site survey system comprising a. The method according to claim 1, wherein the camera consists of the first camera, the second camera map field survey system, characterized in that shooting in all directions 180 degrees ahead. The method according to claim 1, the map site survey system, A first image processor which generates a first frame obtained by converting an image input from the first camera into a frame form; A second image processor which generates a second frame obtained by converting an image input from the second camera into a frame form; Image synthesizer for synthesizing the first frame and the second frame to the left and right in one frame Map spot survey system, characterized in that it further comprises. The method according to claim 1, the map site survey system, Microphone to receive audio sound of the field, An audio processor configured to generate digital audio from which the received audio sound is digitally coded and compressed; Audio storage DB where the digital audio is stored Map spot survey system, characterized in that it further comprises. The map site survey system according to claim 1, wherein the input unit is implemented by a function key, a jog shuttle, and a touch screen method. The map site survey system of claim 1, wherein the display unit displays location information and visual information received from the GPS receiver. In the operation method of the map field survey system to take a picture of the surrounding geographical image and to use when editing the map, A first process of entering a field survey mode for photographing an image in a vehicle traveling direction; A second process of photographing forward and surrounding images using a plurality of cameras; Determining whether the GPS signal is normally received, and if the reception is normal, calculating a current location using the received GPS signal and displaying a map of the corresponding point; In the image display mode for displaying a captured image, a fourth process of storing the captured image in a predetermined memory and simultaneously displaying the captured image together with the map. Operation method of the map site survey system equipped with. The method of claim 7, wherein the fourth process further comprises storing and displaying an image being photographed if the vehicle is in progress even in a non-image display mode.

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