Vehicle tracking, communication and fleet management system
First Claim
1. A sensor apparatus for producing a signal that indicates the speed and direction of a drum on a ready mix truck comprising at least one magnet mounted about the axis of rotation of the truck'"'"'s mixer drum, and dual magnetic field sensors mounted in fixed confronting relation thereto, wherein the magnet activates the sensors in sequence as the magnet passes in front of the sensors.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A vehicle fleet management information system identifies location and direction of movement of each vehicle in a fleet in real-time, and automatically reports such information, as well as status of predetermined events in which the vehicle is engaged, directly to the fleet manager. Each fleet vehicle has an assigned time slot to transmit its reporting information over a communications network without interfering with transmissions from other vehicles in their own respective time slots. A timing control phase lock loop (PLL) provides precise time synchronization for timing corrections from a global positioning system (GPS) based time reference. A dual band full-duplex interface of the network has TDMA on one-half and broadcast on the other half. Microprocessor time processing units in components of the network perform precise clock synchronization. Space diversity performed on received vehicle transmitted messages avoids data corruption. Different vehicles have different periodic transmission intervals, by dynamically allocating the slots for various update rates. Auxiliary reporting slots enable prompt reporting of important data by the respective vehicle transmitters independent of the slower periodic transmission intervals.
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Citations
33 Claims
- 1. A sensor apparatus for producing a signal that indicates the speed and direction of a drum on a ready mix truck comprising at least one magnet mounted about the axis of rotation of the truck'"'"'s mixer drum, and dual magnetic field sensors mounted in fixed confronting relation thereto, wherein the magnet activates the sensors in sequence as the magnet passes in front of the sensors.
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8. A system for automated reporting of the status of a material transport truck, including the status of events related to the operation the truck, to a remote location for system users using a wireless network, the automated reporting system comprising, on board the truck:
at least one sensor for measuring vehicle engine data bus parameters, and computer apparatus for automatically receiving an input from engine data bus parameter measurements, and for transmitting data denoting the measurements to the remote location over the wireless network.
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9-17. -17. (canceled)
- 18. A fleet management system for tracking the locations of vehicles in the fleet and determining the status of events related to the usage of the vehicles, each of said vehicles having a position location system for determining the location of said vehicle and at least one sensor for detecting vehicle event information and a tracking computer for transmitting location information and vehicle event status information to a fleet management office, said vehicle event information being indicative of plural delivery states in a sequence of delivery events in which said vehicle undertakes in a delivery, said system having a delivery state database that stores status information indicative of the delivery state of the delivery vehicle in the sequence of events and wherein said tracking computer transmits location information and vehicle event status information to the fleet management office.
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31. A system for reporting the delivery state of a vehicle and transmitting that delivery state to a vehicle monitoring facility, comprising:
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a sensing system on the vehicle for detecting unique vehicle events indicating unique delivery states of a vehicle among a sequence of unique delivery states a vehicle undertakes in a delivery sequence; and a transmitter for transmitting to a vehicle monitoring facility the delivery states of the vehicle as the vehicle progresses through the delivery sequence. - View Dependent Claims (32, 33)
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Specification