On-demand system for supplemental diagnostic and service resource planning for mobile systems

• US 20060052921A1
• Filed: 11/01/2005
• Published: 03/09/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/07/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Slingshot IOT LLC
• Original Assignee: Derral C. Thorson, William Kress Bodin
• Inventors: Thorson, Derral C., Bodin, William Kress
• Granted Patent: US 8,027,843 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/33
• CPC Class Codes: B60R 16/0232 for measuring vehicle parameters and indicating critical, abnormal or dangerous conditions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/20 Administration of product repair or maintenance
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting

Abstract

In an on-demand computing environment, diagnostic codes from a vehicle or other system in transit are transmitted to an opportunity server, which forwards the codes to a supplemental diagnostic service provider. The diagnostic service provider determines if supplemental diagnostics software functions are available, and if so, downloads them to the vehicle. After executing the supplemental diagnostics, the vehicle reports updated codes to the opportunity server. Multiple cycles of selection, downloading and execution of supplemental diagnostics may be performed until fault isolation is achieved, following which the opportunity server issues requests for bids to potential repair service provides. Responding offers are received, coalesced and presented to the operator. The operator of the vehicle is presented with one or more coalesced offers, upon selection of which, a service is scheduled.

Claims

1. A method for conducting a transaction in an on-demand computing environment for providing an enhanced diagnostic service for mobile systems comprising the steps of:

determining whether enhanced diagnostic software is available on a mobile device, and said said software is not available, downloading said software to said mobile device;

in response availability of enhanced diagnostic software on said mobile device and that an error condition exists with said mobile device, executing said enhanced diagnostic software;

presenting one or more alternative actions for ameliorating one or more problems identified by said enhanced diagnostic software; and

performing at least one of said alternative actions in response to a selection by a user of said mobile device.

2. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of downloading comprises:

providing transaction-oriented process software in a shared file system adapted to determine if any downloadable supplemental diagnostic functions are available to isolate a failure according to a service signal from a mobile system; and

downloading one or more available supplemental diagnostic functions to said mobile system for execution.

3. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of presenting one or more alternative actions for ameliorating one or more problems comprises:

coalescing one or more offers for a repair service according to results of said execution of said downloaded functions; and

present said coalesced offers to an operator of said mobile system.

4. The method as set forth in claim 2 wherein said step of executing said enhanced diagnostic software comprises executing said process software in an on-demand computing system wherein the transactions provided by said process software are automatically shared by simultaneously serving multiple customers.

5. The method as set forth in claim 4 wherein said step of executing said process software in an on-demand computing system comprises differentiating and recording each customer'"'"'s usage of said process software according to one or more parameters included in said transactions, said parameters uniquely identifying each customer and a type of transaction conducted for that customer.

6. The method as set forth in claim 5 further comprising, responsive to a number of simultaneous transactions to any one server exceeding a performance limit of a given server, automatically accessing one or more additional servers to increase the capacity and to share the workload.

7. The method as set forth in claim 5 further comprising providing transaction processing capacity to at least one customer using a pay-as-you-go model in which charges are posted for actual computing resource consumption.

8. The method as set forth in claim 5 further comprising:

collecting by a billing server from a transaction server one or more service consumption measurements for a customer;

periodically summing said collected measurements for said customer;

multiplying said summed measurements by a unit cost factor to yield a total process software application service cost for said customer; and

posting said total process software application service cost to said customer for payment collection.

10. The system as set forth in claim 8 wherein said capacity manager and said usage parameter recorder are further adapted to provide transaction processing capacity to at least one customer using a pay-as-you-go model in which charges are posted for actual computing resource consumption.

11. The system as set forth in claim 10 wherein said resource consumption is metered in at least one unit selected from the group of processor units of time, processor operations, number of transactions completed, network bandwidth utilized, memory usage, storage usage, and number of communications packet transfers completed.

12. The system as set forth in claim 10 wherein said pay-as-you-go model further comprises automatically requesting payment by a service provider directly from a customer account at a banking or financial institution.

13. The system as set forth in claim 10 further comprising:

a billing server adapted to collecting from a transaction server one or more service consumption measurements for a customer; and

a charge calculator adapted to periodically sum said collected measurements for said customer, to multiply said summed measurements by a unit cost factor to yield a total process software application service cost for said customer, and to post said total process software application service cost to said customer for payment collection.

9. A system for conducting a transaction in an on-demand computing environment for providing an enhanced diagnostic service for mobile systems, comprising:

a computer-readable medium encoded with transaction-oriented process software disposable in a shared file system and adapted to determine if any downloadable supplemental diagnostic functions are available to isolate a failure according to a service signal from a mobile system, download one or more available supplemental diagnostic functions to said mobile system for execution, coalesce one or more offers for a repair service according to results of said execution of said downloaded functions; and

present said coalesced offers to an operator of said mobile system;

an on-demand computing system adapted to execute said process software wherein the transactions provided by said process software are automatically shared by simultaneously serving multiple customers;

a usage parameter recorder adapted to differentiate and record each customer'"'"'s usage of said process software according to one or more parameters included in said transactions, said parameters uniquely identifying each customer and a type of transaction conducted for that customer; and

a capacity manager adapted to, responsive to a number of simultaneous transactions to any one server exceeding a performance limit of a given server, automatically access one or more additional servers to increase the capacity and to share the workload.

14. The system as set forth in claim 9 wherein said capacity manager is further adapted to increase transaction handling capacity and to share the workload responsive to exceeding a measured aggregate capacity limit of a server selected from the group of maximum network bandwidth, maximum memory usage, and maximum storage usage.

15. A method for deploying and using a virtual private network for controlling the flow of private reply messages responsive to a broadcast message in a messaging system, said method comprising:

responsive to determining if remote access to broadcast-with-private-reply software, transmitting said software to a client via an unsecure network using secure tunneling;

responsive to determining if site access to said software is required, transmitting said software to a client via an unsecure network using secure tunneling; and

executing said software by said client to perform the steps of;

(a) determining if any downloadable supplemental diagnostic functions are available to isolate a failure according to a service signal from a mobile system;

(b) downloading one or more available supplemental diagnostic functions to said mobile system for execution;

(c) coalescing one or more offers for a repair service according to results of said execution of said downloaded functions; and

(d) presenting said coalesced offers to an operator of said mobile system.