US Patent 11892317 Automatic detection of segment width narrowing using probe data

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided to automatically detect changes in width of road segments in real-time or near real-time using probe data, such as probe data collected from vehicle and/or mobile devices traveling along a road segment. Probe data collected in real-time or near real-time is partitioned in order to identify width-defining portions of the probe data. The width-defining portions may be representative of the laterally-extreme lanes of the road segment, such as the left-most lane and the right-most lane. The width-defining portions are compared to corresponding width-defining portions of historical probe data to determine measures indicative of whether a road segment has expanded or narrowed. Indications of detected segment width changes may be provided to drivers and/or other systems or users. For example, map data for the road segment may be updated to reflect a detected width expansion or narrowing of the road segment.