Telephone operable global tracking system for vehicles

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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention generally relates to vehicles and, more particularly relates to a system for enabling locating and tracking movements of vehicles, for example, stolen vehicles or fleets of vehicles or any moving object.

Vehicle thefts have reached plague proportions in the United States. Aside from the inconvenience of having lost ones mode of transportation, the cost to the economy in the form of insurance expenses, law enforcement activities and other incidental payments, is enormous. Stolen vehicles are often transported or driven to remote locations where they are stripped of their parts. However, a sizeable portion of stolen vehicles continues to remain in use and valuable police department resources must be continuously allocated in finding these vehicles.

Therefore, the advantages and benefits of systems which enable owners to locate their stolen vehicles is obvious. LOJACK.TM. is a known, prior art system for locating vehicles, which relies on equipping vehicles with transmitters which emit characteristic tones to enable law enforcement agents to track and thus locate the stolen vehicles. With LOJACK.TM., the vehicle owner must report the theft to the company that operates the LOJACK.TM. system as well as to the police. It is a complex system. Several steps need to be taken prior to the actual search, including contacting the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain the vehicle's identification number. Therefore, a considerable delay ensues from the discovery of the theft to the commencement of tracking by police or the agencies. Moreover, the use of the LOJACK.TM. system is further hampered by the fact that the system is presently operable in only a small number of States, and only in major metropolitan regions. Also, each tracking station can only monitor over a 12 to 20 square mile region, and therefore vehicles that have been transported out of range cannot be tracked.

Other existing devices or systems for preventing or thwarting vehicle theft have similarly not been fully satisfactory. For example, conventional systems comprising hood, door and trunk locks and/or motion detectors designed to trigger sirens have saturated the public to the point where they are often ignored. These known systems are also easily defeated. The tide of ever increasing car theft has not been satisfactorily checked to date.

The general aim of the present invention is to provide an enhanced system for locating vehicles and/or for monitoring the movements of vehicles, in a manner that overcomes many of the drawbacks of the prior art.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a system for monitoring movements of vehicles in a manner that enables the owners and/or operators or users thereof to locate their vehicles promptly and easily.

It is a further object of the invention to provide a vehicle monitoring system that is simple, relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

Yet a further object of the invention is to provide a vehicle monitoring system that primarily uses existing, reliable and proven systems to implement the same.

It is also an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle monitoring system that uses the vehicle's wireless telephone in conjunction with the known GPS system (Global Positioning System) which is presently operable throughout the World.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a tracking system for enabling owners of fleets of vehicles, e.g. trucks, taxis, rental automobiles, government vehicles, etc. to monitor and manage the movements of their vehicles to assure efficient, prompt and proper operation of these vehicles by their drivers.

The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are realized, in accordance with a first embodiment of the present invention with what the present inventor regards as a GTS, i.e. a Global Tracking System. The GTS essentially consists of a conventional car telephone which includes automatic answering capabilities and a conventional GPS (global positioning system) receiver. The GTS (global tracking system) of the present invention includes a special interface circuit for coupling the conventional telephone to the conventional GPS system to realize a remotely operable (off vehicle) vehicle tracking system. Essentially, the interface component of the GTS serves to convert conventional coordinate position data supplied by the GPS system into voice, i.e. spoken words, which are then played back and/or relayed back to the owner of the vehicle through the vehicle telephone. The owner can then consult look up tables which provide the exact location, e.g. city and cross streets, where the vehicle is currently located.

In accordance with a more elaborate embodiment of the present invention, the interface includes a controller e.g., a microcomputer and circuitry for providing elaborate, multi-purpose interfacing between and among the vehicle's telephone, alarm system, ignition, lighting system etc. and the aforementioned global positioning system (GPS).

Some of the functions realized by the GTS unit of the invention include:

remote calling of the vehicle to obtain the vehicle's present spacial coordinates;

entry of spacial coordinates into a home computer to obtain the vehicle's location;

sensing and providing information about vehicle's speed and direction;

turning the vehicle's ignition on and off remotely;

initiating telephone calls from the vehicle to the owner's home or business or other telephone, when the vehicle alarm has been triggered;

silent (no ringing, no voice, etc.) communications with the vehicle so as not to alert the thief;

automatic sensing and alerting of owner when the vehicle's telephone or antenna have been broken or disabled.

storing vehicle's movements in the controller and subsequently relaying/transmitting to the vehicle's owner the vehicle's path since it was last parked.

The system of the present invention provides owners of vehicles with numerous other options and features including a navigation system which enables the driver to plot the vehicle location on an on-board computer-controlled map display, and an ability to enter a destination and obtain directions to that destination. Further, the invention includes the concept of connecting PCMCIA mapping software to the GTS unit, to provide exact mapping of a route via a look up table in the PCMCIA card. Thus, the invention also constitutes a global mapping system for vehicles, more sophisticated than the existing GPS system which only provides global longitude/latitude coordinates. Alternatively, the system of the present invention includes the method of providing an off-vehicle mapping database accessible by calling a 900 toll number to obtain data which can be used to plot the vehicle's current position and/or movements.

Other applications include obtaining roadside assistance, so that when a driver is lost, he/she may call a central station to download from the GTS unit of the vehicle its present spacial coordinates and obtain in return information such as how to get to a desired destination. Of course, the system can be used for calling emergency services such as ambulance, tow truck, police, and similar services.

Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the invention which refers to the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the system hardware, in accordance with a first embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagrammatic/circuit illustration of a circuit means for converting GPS space coordinates to speech.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a speech synthesizer for use with the interface of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic of a dual tone multiple frequency (DTMF) circuit for converting telephone keyboard commands to electrical outputs capable of controlling vehicle functions.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of system hardware of a more elaborate, second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a software flow chart describing a portion of software used to control a microprocessor controlled GTS unit.

FIG. 7 is an overall, general software block diagram which illustrates various software driven control/protocol functions implemented and used by the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a further software block diagram, describing a section of the system software.

FIG. 9 is another software block diagram, describing other sections of the system software.

FIGS. 10a, 10b and 10c are schematics of a voice synthesizer circuit.

FIGS. 11a and 11b are schematics of a dialor controller.

FIG. 12 is a perspective of the GTS unit housing.

FIG. 13 shows one mode by which the GTS unit can be connected to a conventional flip phone.

FIG. 14 shows another connection between a conventional flip phone and the GTS unit of the present invention.

FIG. 15 shows a conventional transportable cellular telephone including a compartment for the GTS unit of the present invention.

FIG. 16 is a first installation schematic for the GTS unit of the present invention.

FIG. 17 is a second installation schematic for the GTS unit of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION

The present invention constitutes a GTS, i.e. a Global Tracking System, for enabling monitoring and tracking vehicles, or any other moving objects such as children or adults hiking in the woods, or product containers, etc. With reference to FIG. 1, the GTS 10 comprises a conventional global positing system (GPS) receiver 12, operating in conjunction with a similarly entirely conventional, cellular telephone 14 having auto answer and auto dial features. The GTS 10 further includes an interface 16 for coupling the GPS receiver 12 to the telephone 14 and further interface hardware, such as a dual tone multiple frequency (DTMF) board 18, for providing interfacing to the vehicle alarm 20 and/or ignition/lighting/door locks systems 22 of the vehicle.

As is well known, the GPS receiver 12 comprises an antenna 26 for communicating with an array of satellites and thereby, through a triangulation technique, to output latitude and longitude coordinates defining the current global position of the GPS receiver 12. As known, the GPS receiver 12 also outputs speed and direction data. The digitally coded data from the GPS receiver 12 is supplied to the interface 16 which includes speech filtering and synthesizer circuitry to convert the digital data to voice information and to wirelessly transmit that voice information via the antenna 36 of the cellular telephone 14 to a telephone of the vehicle owner 28. Alternatively (or additionally), the information may be called to a police telephone 30, to a privately operated central control station 32 and/or to the vehicle owner's home computer 34, etc.

FIG. 2 further details the overall system configuration, and shows that the GPS receiver 12, which can be any known receiver unit made by Motorola, Encore, Rockwell, etc., has a digital serial output provided through a connector 40. The serial output is supplied to the input of a filtering interface circuit 42, for example a MAX-232 standard filtering interface and voltage-level adjusting circuit, to further supply the filtered longitude/latitude coordinate data via a further connector 44 to a speech synthesizer circuit such as, for example, an RC system 8600 speech board 45. The board 44 serves to convert the spacial coordinates into spoken words, which are then played through a speaker 46 to the microphone input of the cellular phone 14. Voice reproduction can also be made by recording on a digital IC chip #SD-9 such words as North, East, South, West, numerals e.g., one, two, etc., and speed, e.g. miles per hour. The GPS output data will then go through a microprocessor controller to retrieve the numbers and words needed. Speech synthesizer circuits, as such, are well known in the art and one embodiment thereof is illustrated herein in the form presented in FIGS. 10a, 10b and 10c. See also the dialor controller schematic presented in FIGS. 11a and 11b.

FIG. 3 is the generalized block diagram of a speech synthesizer. Overall control is provided by a controller 50, for example, a microprocessor, which interfaces with data and status registers 52 and 54, through which parallel digital data is supplied and/or received. Communication with the controller 50 is also provided via the serial port 56. In any case, digital information, for example from the GPS receiver 12, can then be used to access wave tables and other speech generating means stored in a ROM 60 to be supplied to a random access memory (RAM) 58 and used to provide inputs to the digital to analog converter (DAC) 62, which in well known manner, converts the digital data to an analog speech signal 63. The speech signal 63 is then passed through a low pass filter 64 and then to a power amplifier 66 to drive a speaker, for example, the speaker 46 in FIG. 2. The sound volume is adjustable via a potentiometer 68.

A representative dual tone multiple frequency (DTMF) circuit 18 is illustrated in FIG. 4. These types of circuits are, per se, known in the art. Generally, they have input terminals 70, 72 for receiving telephone signals which are generated in response to the pressing of keys on the telephone handset. These signals are frequency encoded and can be decoded by the illustrated circuitry to provide various outputs, for example in the form of open/closed relay contacts, such as the contacts 74 and 76. In any event, the DTMF circuit 18 permits inputs from such devices as the vehicle alarm etc. to be coupled to the interface/controller 16 in FIG. 1 and/or appropriate outputs to be generated. For example, the vehicle lights can be selectively turned on and off to signal law enforcement agencies that the vehicle is being driven by an unauthorized person, or to cause the vehicle battery to be discharged to immobilize the vehicle. Or these outputs can be used to disable the ignition or operate the doors and/or trunk and hood panels. The use of the DTMF circuit 18 is quite versatile as should be appreciated from the foregoing examples.

The block diagram of the GTS unit 10 of FIG. 5 is generally similar to FIG. 1 except that it illustrates that the interface can be a more sophisticated controller in the form of a microprocessor 80 including flash EPROM, RAM and other interface/control circuits. This microprocessor 80 has a serial port 82 for receiving serial data from a keyboard or other control device, for being programmed or reprogrammed to perform various functions. The microprocessor 80 also controls a battery of relays, optocouplers, or similar devices which are collectively represented by the block 84. These outputs 85 serve to interface the device 80 with the various automobile systems 20 and 22 shown in FIG. 1.

The conventional cellular telephone 14 illustrated here has a base 86, handset 88 and a switch 90 that is controlled by the microprocessor 80 to provide several optional modes of communicating voice and otherwise controlling the telephone 14. For example, the output 92 of the microprocessor 80 serves to control the power on/off or sleep modes of the telephone 14. The decoder and ring detector 94 serves a function similar to the circuit 18 in FIG. 1, as described previously. The interface between the telephone 14 and the microprocessor 80 also includes a voice play-back circuit 96 which performs functions similar to the interface 16 in FIG. 1.

A general software flowchart for operating the basic hardware illustrated in FIG. 5 is set forth in FIG. 6. The software has a start block 100 which encompasses all the software instructions/steps needed for initializing various software registers, memories, etc. The program proceeds to block 102 which monitors keypad keys and/or incoming calls and then allows the program to proceed to block 104 which checks whether the person desiring access to the GTS unit 10 possesses a valid PIN code. If yes, the decisional block 106 allows the software to proceed to the block 108 which inputs the code and thereafter determines (at step 110) whether the code is a programming code, or whether the software should perform PIN number setting options at block 112 or check whether the request is to set an alarm PIN code at block 114.

If an alarm function has been requested, alarm related functions are performed in the blocks 116 and 118 based on the inputted program code. Depending on the type of program code that has been entered, the program then proceeds to the block 120 to reset a default status and also to set an option status, disarm the alarm and enable the handset, as needed. Alternatively, the program proceeds to the block 122 to power up the phone or to disable the handset; or to dial an emergency number, announce a position, etc., all in accordance with the command that has been entered.

If an alarm PIN code is detected in block 124, the program announces the vehicle position in block 126, or it checks to determine whether a police PIN code has been entered in block 128. If so, it proceeds to transmit the position data in block 130.

To prevent repeated, unauthorized attempts to access the GTS unit 10, the program checks in block 132 whether the number of failed attempts to access the system has exceeded a predetermined count. If yes, the program proceeds via block 122 to the start position. Otherwise, the program returns to its initial point to continue monitoring of incoming calls and/or keyboard entries.

A somewhat more generalized, overall software block diagram is presented in FIG. 7. Here, the initializing section is represented by block 150, from which the program proceeds to the "wait for call" block 152. If it detects an off-hook condition 154, it verifies that a properly coded command has been received at 156 and if so, proceeds to perform a PIN (personal identification number) verification at block 158. If a command is not entered within a predetermined time (block 160), the call is terminated and the program returns to the block 152 to await