GPS Community Map Generation for Enhanced Routing Methods Based on Trace-Collection by Mobile Phones

The paper describes a map generation system which relies on random individual contributions of GPS traced movements. In a typical use case, mobile phone users would join a specific community to contribute their movements along streets, roads or pathways in form of so called traces. Neither contributing subscribers nor the map generation need to have an a priori knowledge of the charted area. The approach presented here comprises the trace recording, the upload process to a common server and the processing algorithm for map generation. The problem of noisy data, resulting from GPS inaccuracies and random movements is addressed and countermeasures are proposed.