Navigational Video and Virtual Tours

This portfolio of inventions provides the tools for an advanced navigational system and panoramic virtual tours – technology that is incorporated in Google Street View. The technology synthesizes missing images to provide a continuous panoramic tour from arbitrary viewpoints and the ability to tag video. When applied to navigation, the system can generate a map using location and scene data from a variety of sensors including GPS, laser scanners, and cameras, for off and on road terrains – moving vehicle position is precisely tracked on the generated map. The technology was demonstrated in the 2005 and 2007 DARPA Autonomous Vehicle Challenges.

Technologies in the Portfolio

Multi-point Viewing of Panoramic Video (S06-418) – A software system that allows a user to view panoramic videos from arbitrary viewpoints using separate, non-overlapping, geo-referenced, panoramic video streams, synthesizing missing panoramic images to provide the user with a complete video sequence.

Tagging Objects in Panoramic Videos (S06-419) - This user interface enables a user to define tags within virtual tour applications that label objects in panoramic images and video – a process that has been very difficult to achieve prior to this invention.

User Interface for Displaying and Navigating Video (S07-033) - Stanford researchers developed this responsive, intuitive user interface to enable a user to explore a dataset consisting of many location-referenced image panoramas (mapped scene data), with a client-server architecture that minimizes critical user viewing or video play wait times.

Software System for Collecting, Storing, Processing & Serving Panoramic Images and Movies (S07-034) - This software system acquires panoramic video footage and makes the data viewable on a Web browser. The system enables a human editor to select specific subsequences of the data, and organize it, and have others view it.

*These can be licensed separately or in combination.