A schematic map generation system for pedestrian navigation.

A novel schematic map generation system for pedestrian navigation is proposed. Although there are a wide variety of route guidance maps for pedestrians, a schematic map is quite useful for its simplicity. To obtain a schematic map, the proposed system generates route guidance text directions first, and then a schematic map is reconstructed. The proposed system advantageously utilises VML as a description language of two-dimensional map and XML as data structure of map information. The system operates not only on standalone bases but also on a Web server. An interpreter is also provided which depicts a schematic map from the text directions transmitted over the Internet.