PathMarker: Systems for Capturing Trips

Central to capturing a trip is knowing where you were, and when you were there. Combining continuous path data with media (Path-Enhanced Media or PEM) offers substantial advantages over the previous approach of tagging individual media with time and location. Accurate paths allow for the 1) automatic creation of an organized, rich media diary that helps people remember, enrich, share and relive past trips and helps them to plan for new trips; 2) embellishment of trips using third party stock media and non-media information; 3) the natural, automatically created presentation of trips; and 4) new kinds of media annotation, sharing, dissemination, search and organization.

By combining GPS path information with digital media, we have built prototype systems for gathering, editing, presenting and browsing PEM. We developed 1) a methodology for gathering PEM with off-the shelf hardware; 2) software for automatic conversion of the raw path data and media into an application independent XML representation; and 3) example PEM applications. A first application provides map-overlaid trip editing, presentation and browsing. A second application provides a 3D immersive environment with digital elevation maps for automatic trip flybys and for browsing. A third experiment involved generating an interactive DVD from path-enhanced media, resulting in a compelling presentation of a vacation trip.

Technical details are found in these papers (pdf downloads available here) :

R. Samadani, D. Mukherjee, U. Gargi, N. Chang, D. Tretter and M. Harville, "PathMarker: Systems for Capturing Trips," IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Taipei, Taiwan, June 2004. 

M. Harville, R. Samadani, D. Tretter, D. Mukherjee, U. Gargi, N. Chang "MediaBeads: An Architecture for Path-Enhanced Media Applications," IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Taipei, Taiwan, June 2004. 

Contact

For more information about PathMarker, please contact Ramin Samadani (Ramin.Samadani @hp.com) at Imaging Technology Dept., HP Labs.