Context-Aware Alarm System

• US 20110001812A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 01/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Chubb Protection Corporation (Carrier Global Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Chubb International Holdings Ltd. (Carrier Global Corporation)
• Inventors: Gillis, Thomas M., D'souza, Ollencio, Kang, Pengju, Finn, Alan M.
• Application Number:
  US11/886,481
• Publication Number:
  US 20110001812A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/77
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 13/00 Burglar, theft or intruder alarms
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/0423 detecting deviation from an expected pattern of behaviour or schedule
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/0492 Sensor dual technology, i.e. two or more technologies collaborate to extract unsafe condition, e.g. video tracking and RFID tracking
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 29/183 Single detectors using dual technologies G08B13/1672, G08B13/2448, G08B13/2494 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 29/186 Fuzzy logic; neural networks
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 31/00 Predictive alarm systems characterised by extrapolation or other computation using updated historic data

Abstract

An alarm system (20) computes a situation context output (30) as a function of information received from sensors (24a-24n). The alarm system (20) extracts contextual information (l_a-l_n) related to situation (22) of environment (18) and aggregates contextual information (l_a-l_n) using context aggregation (34) to produce situation context output (30).

Claims

1. An alarm system for monitoring an environment and generating a contextualized alarm output in response to an alarm event, the alarm system comprising:

a plurality of sensors to monitor the environment and produce sensor signals representative of a situation associated with the alarm event;

means for extracting contextual information about the situation from the sensor signals;

means for generating a contextualized alarm output as a function of the contextual information; and

communication circuitry for communicating the contextualized alarm output.

2. The alarm system of claim 1, wherein the means for extracting the contextual information comprises a data processor.

3. The alarm system of claim 2, wherein the data processor is located in an alarm panel.

4. The alarm system of claim 2, wherein the data processor is located in one of the plurality of sensors.

5. The alarm system of claim 1, wherein the means for generating the contextualized alarm output comprises a data processor located in an alarm panel.

6. The alarm system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of sensors comprises a video sensor capable of extracting contextual information related to the situation.

7. The alarm system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of sensors comprises a portable identity recognition device adapted to extract contextual information about a user of the identity recognition device.

8. An alarm system for monitoring an environment, the alarm system comprising:

a plurality of sensors to monitor the environment and generate sensor signals representative of conditions associated with the environment; and

a local alarm panel comprising;

inputs for communicating with the plurality of sensors to receive the sensor signals from the sensors;

a data processor in communication with the inputs to receive the sensors signals and produce a contextualized alarm output as a function of the sensor signals; and

communication circuitry in communication with the data processor for communicating the contextualized alarm output.

9. The alarm system of claim 8, wherein at least one of the sensor signals includes contextual information produced by one of the plurality of sensors.

10. The alarm system of claim 8, wherein the data processor extracts contextual information from the sensor signals and produces the contextualized alarm output as a function of the contextual information.

11. The alarm system of claim 8, wherein the contextualized alarm output includes diagnostic information related to health of the alarm system.

12. The alarm system of claim 8, wherein at least one of the plurality of sensors comprises a smart sensor equipped with on-board intelligence for extracting contextual information from sensor data.

13. The alarm system of claim 12, wherein the smart sensor comprises a portable identity recognition device that provides contextual information about a user of the identity recognition device.

14. The alarm system of claim 13, wherein the identity recognition device includes a fingerprint scanner.

15. The alarm system of claim 13, wherein the identity recognition device includes a keypad.

16. A method for enhancing performance of an alarm system including a plurality of sensors deployed in an environment, the method comprising:

monitoring the environment with the plurality of sensors and producing sensor signals representative of conditions associated with the environment;

detecting an alarm event based on at least one of the sensor signals;

extracting contextual information from the sensor signals relating to conditions associated with the alarm event; and

producing a contextualized alarm output as a function of the contextual information.

17. The method of claim 16, and further comprising:

transmitting the contextualized alarm output to a remote monitoring system.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the contextualized alarm output is transmitted to the remote monitoring system only if the contextualized alarm output indicates that the alarm event is a true alarm event.

19. The method of claim 16, and further comprising:

transmitting the contextualized alarm output to a first responder.

20. The method of claim 16, and further comprising:

prioritizing the contextualized alarm output relative to other alarm outputs.