Method and System for Locating and Monitoring First Responders

• US 20080077326A1
• Filed: 05/31/2007
• Published: 03/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: TRX Systems, Inc.
• Original Assignee: TRX Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Bandyopadhyay, Amrit, Teolis, Carole, Kohn, Eric, Funk, Benjamin, Goldsman, Neil, Blankenship, Gilmer
• Granted Patent: US 8,688,375 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/220
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/1654 with electromagnetic compass
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/49 whereby the further system is an inertial position system, e.g. loosely-coupled
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 25/016 Personal emergency signalling and security systems emergency non-personal manually actuated alarm activators G08B25/12
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/20 Monitoring the location of vehicles belonging to a group, e.g. fleet of vehicles, countable or determined number of vehicles

Abstract

The present invention is directed to methods and systems for locating and monitoring the status of people and moveable assets, such as first responders, including firefighters and other public service personnel, and their equipment both indoors and out. The invention can provide for locating and monitoring the status of people and assets in environments where GPS systems do not operate, or where operation is impaired or otherwise limited. The system and method uses inertial navigation to determine the location, motion and orientation of the personnel or assets and communicates with an external monitoring station to receive requests for location, motion orientation and status information and to transmit the location, motion orientation and status information to the monitoring station. The system and method can include storing the location, motion and orientation data as well as status data, in the event that the communication system is unable to communicate with and transmit information to the monitoring station, the system will wait until communication is restored and transmit the status information to the monitoring station to update the location, motion orientation and status information for the person or asset.

Claims

1. A system for tracking a mobile person or object comprising:

A portable module including a inertial navigation unit coupled to a portable data transceiver;

The inertial navigation unit including at least one accelerometer adapted to generate accelerometer data, at least one gyroscope adapted to generate gyroscope data, at least one digital compass adapted to generate compass data and a microprocessor for processing said accelerometer data, said gyroscope data, and said compass data to produce real time position information about said mobile person or object and to send said real time position information to said portable data transceiver, said portable transceiver being adapted to send said real time position information to the base station data transceiver;

A base station including a computer coupled to a base station data transceiver, said base station data transceiver being adapted to communicate with said portable data transceiver and to receive said real time position information from said portable data transceiver,

The computer including software and being adapted to process the real time position information in order to determine and track the position, orientation and movements of the mobile person or object.

2. The system according to claim 1 wherein the inertial navigation unit includes at least two sets of predefined gate motion information, and said microprocessor includes software adapted to compare at least one of said real time position information, said accelerometer data, said gyroscope data, and said compass data to at least one of said sets of predefined gate motion information and to determine a measure of at least one of distance moved, direction moved and elevation moved.