Importance

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Abstract

Location-based devices (e.g., GPS receivers) may be used to identify and track traffic conditions. However, such scenarios are difficult to extend to the identification of relevant facts other than traffic, such as road or weather conditions (e.g., debris, animals, or ice). Presented herein are techniques for receiving and aggregating reports of location-based conditions received from users, either spontaneously (“I just witnessed an accident”) or in response to a query (e.g., “did you encounter road ice one kilometer ago?”) From such reports, location conditions of respective locations may be automatically extracted (e.g., using natural-language parsing techniques), and users in the vicinity of or routing through a particular location may be automatically notified of location conditions (e.g., “ice reported one kilometer ahead”). Such systems may also communicate with users in a voice-only interface while the user is operating a vehicle, and may additionally receive and utilize vehicle telemetry to determine location conditions.

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First Claim