Fine grained location-based services

• US 10,043,391 B2
• Filed: 03/08/2017
• Issued: 08/07/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/27/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Fan, Si Bin, Gu, Yu, Liu, Su, Xu, Cheng
• Primary Examiner(s): Tweel, Jr., John A
• Application Number:
  US15/453,875
• Publication Number:
  US 20170345307A1
• Time in Patent Office: 517 Days
• Field of Search: 340435
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096716 where the received information does not generate an automatic action on the vehicle control
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096741 where the source of the transmitted information selects which information to transmit to each vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/09675 where a selection from the received information takes place in the vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096791 where the origin of the information is another vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/161 Decentralised systems, e.g. inter-vehicle communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/023 using mutual or relative location information between multiple location based services [LBS] targets or of distance thresholds
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/46 for vehicle-to-vehicle communication [V2V]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

Systems, methods, and computer program products to perform an operation comprising receiving, by a first communications interface of a mobile device associated with a first vehicle, location information from a peer device associated with a second vehicle, determining, by the mobile device, an estimated location of the second vehicle relative to the first vehicle based on the location information received from the peer device, and determining, by the mobile device, that the first vehicle is located in a first lane of a road based on the estimated location of the second vehicle relative to the first vehicle.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving, by a first communications interface of a mobile device associated with a first vehicle, location information from a peer device associated with a second vehicle;

determining, by the mobile device, an estimated location of the second vehicle relative to the first vehicle based on the location information received from the peer device; and

determining, by the mobile device, that the first vehicle is located in a first lane of a road based on the estimated location of the second vehicle relative to the first vehicle.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a global positioning system (GPS) location from a GPS module in the first vehicle;

determining an estimated location of the first vehicle based on the GPS location and the determination that the first vehicle is in the first lane of the road; and

providing the estimated location of the first vehicle to a service provided by one or more of the mobile device and the first vehicle.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the service comprises one or more of:

(i) a navigation service, (ii) lane-based navigation assistance, (iii) a collision avoidance service, (iv) a driving assistant, and (v) a blind-spot warning service.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the mobile device, location information from a second peer device associated with a third vehicle; and

determining an estimated location of the third vehicle relative to the first vehicle based on the location information received from the second peer device, wherein the first vehicle is determined to be in the first lane of the road based on the estimated locations of the second and third vehicles relative to the first vehicle.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first communications interface comprises one of:

(i) a wireless network connection, (ii) Bluetooth®

connection, (iii) a near field communication (NFC) interface, (iv) a radio frequency identifier (RFID) communication, (v) an acoustic signal, (vi) a cellular network connection, and (vii) a dedicated short range communications (DSRC) communication, wherein the position of the second vehicle relative to the first vehicle is determined based on an angle of arrival of the received location information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the received location information from the peer mobile device further comprises location information of a third vehicle relative to the second vehicle, wherein the determination that the first vehicle is in the first lane is further based on the location information of the third vehicle relative to the second vehicle.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first lane is of a plurality of lanes of the road, wherein the first vehicle is further determined to be in the first lane based on a determination that the first vehicle is adjacent to a median in the road, wherein the method further comprises:

prior to receiving the location information from the peer device, generating, by the mobile device, a signal requesting location information from available peer devices; and

transmitting the signal at predefined timing intervals via the first communications interface.