System identifying a driver before they approach the vehicle using wireless communication protocols

• US 10,137,848 B2
• Filed: 01/13/2016
• Issued: 11/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/13/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: DeCia, Nunzio, Orris, Jr., Stephen Jay, Herman, David A., Scheufler, Nicholas Alexander, Bridgewater, Richard D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Sood, Anshul
• Application Number:
  US14/994,861
• Publication Number:
  US 20170197568A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,049 Days
• CPC Class Codes: B60R 16/037 for occupant comfort , e.g. for automatic adjustment of appliances according to personal settings, e.g. seats, mirrors, steering wheel
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/42 Determining position
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0258 controlling an operation mode according to history or models of usage information, e.g. activity schedule or time of day
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

A vehicle wireless beacon scheduling system is disclosed. In one embodiment, the system includes a vehicle including steering, an accelerator, brakes, a processor, and memory. The system also includes a beacon optimizer module coupled to the processor comprising driver driving pattern data stored in the memory, and a beacon scheduler module coupled to the processor and configured to transmit Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data from the vehicle in advance of a predicted trip in the vehicle by a driver based on the driver driving pattern data. The beacon scheduler module is configured to dynamically adjust at least one of a transmission time, a transmission rate, and a transmission duration of the BLE data from the vehicle based on a probability of a trip taken by the driver in the vehicle.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a vehicle including a processor and memory;

a departure prediction module to determine a departure probability based upon driving patterns of a driver, GPS positions data, time data, driver calendar data, and driver social media data;

a ping rate module to;

increase a transmission rate, based upon the departure probability, from a default transmission rate to an increased transmission rate at a predetermined transmission time for a predetermined transmission duration for signals to detect the driver;

select a first transmission rate for a first portion of the predetermined transmission duration and a second transmission rate that is less than the first transmission rate for a second portion of the predetermined transmission duration that occurs after and is longer than the first portion; and

adjust an amount of increase from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate, wherein the amount of increase is variable with respect to the GPS position data, the time data, the driver calendar data, and the driver social media data; and

a beacon module to preconfigure a driver setting before a predicted trip upon detecting that the driver is within range of the ping rate module.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the beacon module is configured to receive at least one of real-time data and historical data comprising the driving patterns of the driver.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one of real-time data and historical data include at least one of a trip start time, an originating location of the vehicle, a distance driven in the trip, a destination to which the vehicle is driven, location data including discrete geo-location data of the vehicle along a path driven, a duration of the trip, a duration of any temporary stops taken along a path driven, a location of such temporary stops, and an identity of a landmark or an address at or near each such temporary stop, the originating location, and the destination.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one of real-time data and historical data include the GPS position data and the time data that are associated with each of the position data of the vehicle.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one of real-time data and historical data include at least one of the driver calendar data and the driver social media data, wherein the beacon module includes a driver data module coupled to the processor and configured to wirelessly synchronize the driver calendar data and the driver social media data residing in the memory on the vehicle with the driver calendar data and the driver social media data residing in memory on a cloud storage device, and wherein the departure prediction module is coupled to the processor and configured to determine the departure probability for a determined time of day and day of week based on the synchronized driver calendar data and the driver social media data.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the ping rate module selects the increased transmission rate based upon a standard deviation of the historical data of the driving patterns of the driver.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the beacon module includes a driver heat map module coupled to the processor and configured to identify the driving patterns of the driver with the vehicle, wherein the driver heat map module is configured to determine whether a driven distance of the trip from origin to the destination as measured linearly from the origin exceeds a threshold amount, the threshold amount being non-zero.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the departure prediction module is coupled to the processor and configured to determine the departure probability for a determined time of day and day of week based on the driving patterns of the driver with the vehicle.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the signals for detecting the driver in a vicinity of the vehicle are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the driver heat map module is configured to register a presence of the driver in the vicinity of the vehicle.

11. The system of claim 9, including a beacon scheduler module coupled to the processor and configured to transmit BLE signals from the vehicle at the predetermined transmission time, the increased transmission rate, and over the predetermined transmission duration.

12. The system of claim 7, wherein the beacon module is configured to:

determine whether the driven distance of the trip is less than the threshold amount; and

disregard the trip in response to determining that the driven distance of the predicted trip is less than the threshold amount.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein, based upon the departure probability, the ping rate module selects the first transmission rate of the first portion of the predetermined transmission duration, a first duration for the first portion, the second transmission rate of the second portion, and a second duration for the second portion.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the departure prediction module is to further:

responsive to the driver calendar data including a user-submitted calendared item that is not associated with any location, associate a location at which the vehicle is parked to the user-submitted calendared item at a time at which the user-submitted calendared item is occurring.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the departure prediction module is to further:

generate a probability graph based the GPS position data, the time data, the driver calendar data, and the driver social media data;

responsive to a probability at which the driver will embark on the predicted trip being at one standard deviation away from a mean of the probability graph, adjust the amount of increase from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate to a first amount;

responsive to the probability at which the driver will embark on the predicted trip being at two standard deviation away from the mean of the probability graph, adjust the amount of increase from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate to a second amount; and

responsive to the probability at which the driver will embark on the predicted trip being at three standard deviation away from the mean of the probability graph, adjust the amount of increase from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate to a third amount,

wherein the first amount is greater than the second amount and the third amount, and the second amount is greater than the third amount.

16. A vehicle wireless beacon scheduling system, comprising:

a vehicle including steering, an accelerator, brakes, a processor, and memory;

a beacon optimizer module coupled to the processor comprising driver driving pattern data stored in the memory;

a departure prediction module coupled to the processor and configured to determine a departure probability of the vehicle based upon the driver driving pattern data, GPS position data, time data, driver calendar data, and driver social media data;

a beacon scheduler module coupled to the processor and configured to transmit Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data from the vehicle in advance of a predicted trip in the vehicle by a driver based on the driver driving pattern data; and

a ping rate optimizer module to;

increase a transmission rate for transmission of the BLE data, based upon the departure probability, from a default transmission rate to an increased transmission rate at a predetermined transmission time for a predetermined transmission duration;

select a first transmission rate for a first portion of the predetermined transmission duration and a second transmission rate that is less than the first transmission rate for a second portion of the predetermined transmission duration that occurs after and is longer than the first portion; and

adjust an amount of increase from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate, wherein the amount of increase is variable with respect to the GPS position data, the time data, the driver calendar data, and the driver social media data,

wherein the beacon scheduler module is configured to preconfigure at least one driver setting of the vehicle in advance of the predicted trip in the vehicle in response to a detection of the driver in a vicinity of the vehicle via the BLE data.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the driver driving pattern data include at least one of a trip start time, an originating location of the vehicle, a distance driven in the trip, a destination to which the vehicle is driven, location data including discrete geo-location data of the vehicle along a path driven, a duration of the trip, a duration of any temporary stops taken along a path driven, a location of such temporary stops, and an identity of a landmark or an address at or near each such temporary stop, the originating location, and the destination.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the beacon optimizer module includes a driver data module coupled to the processor and configured to wirelessly synchronize driver calendar data and driver social media data residing in the memory on the vehicle with driver calendar data and driver social media data residing in memory on a cloud storage device.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the departure prediction module coupled is configured to determine the departure probability of the vehicle based on the driver calendar data and the driver social media data that are synchronized.

20. A vehicle wireless beacon scheduling system, comprising:

a vehicle including steering, an accelerator, brakes, a processor, and memory;

a beacon optimizer module coupled to the processor comprising driver driving pattern data stored in the memory, the beacon optimizer module configured to;

determine a departure probability of the vehicle based upon the driver driving pattern data, GPS, position data, time data, driver calendar data, and driver social media data, wherein the driver driving pattern data is based upon a driver heat map module collecting a threshold number of data points for the driver driving pattern data, and wherein the driver heat map module is configured to determine whether a driven distance of a trip exceeds a threshold amount that is non-zero and disregard the trip in response to determining that the driven distance is less than the threshold amount; and

preconfigure a driver setting of the vehicle in advance of a predicted trip in the vehicle in response to a detection of a driver in a vicinity of the vehicle via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data; and

a beacon scheduler module coupled to the processor and configured to;

transmit the BLE data from the vehicle in advance of the predicted trip in the vehicle by the driver based on the driver driving pattern data;

dynamically increase a transmission rate for transmission of the BLE data from the vehicle, based on the departure probability of the driver in the vehicle, from a default transmission rate to an increased transmission rate for a predetermined transmission duration; and

adjust an amount of increase from the default from the default transmission rate to the increased transmission rate, wherein the amount of increase is variable with respect to the GPS position data, the time data, the driver calendar data, and the driver social media data.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the beacon optimizer module includes a departure prediction module coupled to the processor and configured to determine the probability of departure in the vehicle based on the driver driving pattern data.

22. The system of claim 20, wherein, based upon the departure probability, the ping rate module selects a first transmission rate for a first portion of the predetermined transmission duration and a second transmission rate for a second portion of the predetermined transmission duration, the second transmission rate being less than the first transmission rate, the second portion being greater than and occurring after the first portion.