Microsoft's pedestrian route patent cops flak

Stephen Withers
Monday, 09 January 2012 16:04

Your IT - Mobility

Microsoft has been granted a patent for a system that generates pedestrian routes taking into consideration a wide range of factors.

Most pedestrian route generators only take into consideration a small number of factors, primarily the absence of turn restrictions on pedestrians, and the presence of pedestrian-only features such as footbridges, passages and subways (using the Australian and British meaning of that last term).

Microsoft's recently granted US patent number 8,090,532 proposes the use of a much wider range of information to determine an optimal route.

These include weather (on especially hot, cold or wet days it may be preferable to take a longer route that's largely undercover, or to resort to public transport), congestion (CBD footpaths sometimes get clogged while the next parallel street is relatively quiet), or the quality of the road surface (a pedestrian may prefer to avoid unsurfaced roads, or those lacking pavements except in residential areas where there is no alternative without greatly adding to the distance.

The patent also provides for commercial considerations - the user might nominate that the route should pass a particular cafe or a coffee shop belonging to a certain chain, or a store could provide incentives (either to the individual, or to the navigation company or advertisers on the service) to encourage routes that pass or run through its premises.

Other considerations include the availability of public transport (and the need to present information in a natural format, such as the name or colour of an underground railway line, plus the direction in terms of compass points or terminus names as used by the particular system), the desire to meet with another user (eg, a lost child equipped with a GPS tracking device), and whether the user is authorised to enter locations (eg, a destination that is within a restricted area).

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