Method and apparatus of providing street view data of a real estate property

#The present application relates in general to systems and methods of generating image data of a geographic location of interest. Specifically, the invention relates to generating video drive-by data corresponding to a selected geographic location. The video drive-by data provides a street level view of a neighborhood surrounding the selected geographic location, and can be further combined with other data sources in a variety of applications. The invention also relates to generating data descriptive of a continuum of images, such as those comprising a geographic setting.

#Companies and individuals looking for real estate to rent, buy, insure or finance have historically had to physically travel to the property in order to visually verify the condition of the property. With the advent of the Internet, it has become possible for individuals to view photographs of properties on-line in the comfort of their home or office. One such example is the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) database, which can be accessed by the public through Internet sites such as www.realtor.com. The MLS database typically includes one or more photographs and additional data regarding the property such as the number of bedrooms and the square footage. More advanced systems may include short video clips constituting virtual tours of the property in question. While such systems may also show views of a property from the street, they do not give a user a sense of the neighborhood in which the property is located. Accordingly, in order to determine if the area surrounding the property of interest is desirable, a user may often be required to physically travel to the property in order to view the state of the neighborhood.

#In order to overcome the deficiencies of present systems of the type described above, it would be desirable to provide a system that would enable a user to view the surrounding neighborhood as well as the property itself. Such a system would enable the creation of a complete on-line database of street-level video data, hereinafter referred to as “video drive-by” data, which can be made available to end users via the Internet. Preferably, the video data would be encoded with GPS coordinates as well as conventional street addresses and map coordinates to provide instant street level video of any location upon request. For example, such a system would be extremely useful if a user could query the system by submitting GPS coordinates, street addresses or by “clicking” on a map overlay showing streets in the desired neighborhood.

#The invention will be described in detail with reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof and the accompanying drawings, wherein:

#FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a Video and Data Server Farm in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention;

#FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram of a Video Capture System that supplies video data and corresponding synchronous GPS data to the Video and Data Server Farm illustrated in FIG. 1;

#A Video & Data Server Farm 0100 in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 1. The Video & Data Server Farm 0100 utilizes a set of servers to provide digital storage of video drive-by data, and processes the video drive-by data for delivery to an end user. The video drive-by data preferably includes video data and Global Positioning System (GPS) data or “geo position data” generated by a Video Capture System 0201 illustrated in FIG. 2. Specifically, video drive-by data is preferably stored on an external hard disk drive (HDD) 0250 of the Video Capture System 0201, and is then copied from the external HDD 0250 to a landing zone server 0130 of the Video & Data Server Farm 0100 for quality analysis and viewing via industry standard commercially available MPEG2 viewing software and file editors. The Video drive-by data, including the video data and GPS data, is transferred via a load network 0142 to be stored as video image files in video storage servers 0145 of the Video & Data Server Farm 0110.

#In operation, a user logs onto the Internet 0150 via an end user interface 0102 to access the video image files containing the converted video drive-by data via a data query that includes data related to a specific geographic location of interest. The data query received by a web server 0105 and carried over a control network 0135 to a database server 0120 and a map server 0125, which preferably calculates and presents a static image (for example a street map image) of an overhead view of the geographic location of interest. The database server 0120 identifies the appropriate video image files corresponding to the location of interest from the video storage servers 0145 for transfer over a pre-processing network 0140 to image processing servers 0115. The image processing servers 0115 convert the original video drive-by data to one of many potential new image formats (depending on the particular application) which constitute Post-processed Video Data (PPVD). The PPVD is then transferred to a video server 0110 over a post-processing network 0141, which then forwards the PPVD data to the Internet 0150 in response to the query. In addition, if so desired, the video server 0110 can also concurrently transfer the PPVD back to the video storage servers 0145, database servers 0120 and map server 0125 for future access from a video cache.

#FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram of the components in the Video Capture System 0201. In a preferred embodiment, a camera unit 0205 preferably containing six video cameras 0210 in a hexagonal array is provided in a camera housing assembly 0215. The camera housing assembly 0215 is mounted with differing configurations on top of a vehicle (not shown) preferably using commercially available roof racks and straps. The electronics for converting and storing the video data out of the camera 205 are preferably provided in a passenger cab 0220 of the vehicle. The Video Capture System 0201 is preferably powered from the vehicles electrical system, although a separate power source can be provided if so desired. The camera 0205 feeds analog video signals 0227 along six cables in a cable harness 0225 which is fed through a small opening in a window of the vehicle. The analog video signals 0227 are fed into six analog-to-digital (A/D) converters 0230, which convert the analog video signals 0227 to compressed digital video data. The compressed digital video data is then sent on data cables 0232 into a seven port USB hub 0235. The six streams of digital video data are fed via the hub 0235 into a laptop computer 0245, which preferably writes the digital video data onto a portable storage device, for example the external HDD 0250, simultaneously with the data from a GPS receiver 0240. Accordingly, the data is stored with corresponding GPS synchronized coordinates in the external HDD 0250 as the Video drive-by data.