Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) and Microsoft Research India (MSR India) have collaborated to work on Robust Location Search – which helps solve problems that arise when users search for addresses.
Started as a research project at MSR India and now being developed by MSIDC as a feature of Microsoft’s Live Search Maps service, Robust Location Search takes a radically new approach to location search by using keywords to find places, rather than commonly used address rules, to answer queries.
This enables relevant results regardless of the address type and structure and also enables cross-lingual address searches.
For instance, an address specified as being ‘near NIMS’ with a building name in Hindi can be located using Robust Location Search. This automatically identifies the building near the Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad.
“The development of this product already reached the stage of maturity and integration with the Live Search Maps service is going on right now,” Srini Koppolu, corporate vice-president and managing director of MSIDC, told mediapersons here on Friday.