Patent 9036000 was granted and assigned to Google on May, 2015 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A street-level imagery acquisition and selection process identifies which images are published in a street field view. An imagery database includes panoramas each corresponding to a set of images acquired from a single viewpoint. The panoramas are attached to corresponding positions on a road network graph. The graph is divided into a set of selection paths, each of which includes a topologically linear sequence of road segments. Each selection path is evaluated to select a set of panoramas to be published in the path. Panoramas of interior road segments are selected before panoramas at intersections. Selected panorama identifiers for each interior road segment of the selection paths and each intersection correspond to a position along the road network graph. The selected panorama identifiers are then published in the street field view.