CALL CENTER BASED ZONED MICROPHONE CONTROL IN A VEHICLE

• US 20130337762A1
• Filed: 06/14/2012
• Published: 12/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Motors LLC (General Motors Company)
• Original Assignee: General Motors LLC (General Motors Company)
• Inventors: Buch, Gary M., Gratke, Jesse T., Ampunan, Nathan D., Martin, Douglas C., Shahmurad, Bassam S.
• Granted Patent: US 9,549,061 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/404.1
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/205 Indicating the location of the monitored vehicles as destination, e.g. accidents, stolen, rental
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72418 for supporting emergency services
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5116 for emergency applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/90 Services for handling of emergency or hazardous situations, e.g. earthquake and tsunami warning systems [ETWS]

Abstract

A method and system for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle. The method involves detecting a potential emergency condition, sending an emergency notification to a call center, receiving a listening zone control signal identifying at least one of a plurality of listening zones in the vehicle, and supplying audio received from the identified listening zones(s) to the call center via a voice call between the vehicle and call center.

Claims

1. A method for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle, comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving a communication at a call center from a vehicle indicating emergency services may be needed by one or more occupants of the vehicle;

(b) sending a listening zone control signal to the vehicle; and

(c) monitoring at the call center for audio received over a voice call from at least one microphone in the vehicle that is configured to pickup sound from a passenger compartment listening zone identified by the control signal.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein step (a) further comprises receiving a crash detection notification from the vehicle.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein step (a) further comprises receiving occupant position information indicating the location of one or more occupants within the vehicle.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the step of receiving occupant position information further comprises receiving an indication of which of a number of listening zones were determined by the vehicle to have occupants based on prior speech pickup from one or more of the listening zones.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein step (b) further comprises determining the listening zone control signal based on the occupant position information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein steps (b) and (c) are carried out by an advisor at the call center.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of sending a second listening zone control signal to switch to monitoring of a different listening zone in the vehicle.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of assessing the condition of occupants in the vehicle by switching between two or more listening zones using control signals sent from the call center and analyzing audio from the two or more listening zones.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the assessing step is carried out by a live advisor at the call center.

10. A method for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle, comprising the steps of:

(a) detecting a potential emergency condition;

(b) sending an emergency notification to a call center;

(c) receiving a listening zone control signal identifying at least one of a plurality of listening zones in the vehicle; and

(d) supplying audio received from the identified listening zone(s) to the call center via a voice call between the vehicle and call center.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein step (a) further comprises detecting a vehicle collision using a collision sensor, or receiving an occupant manual request for emergency services.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein step (b) includes sending occupant related data indicating occupant position, number of occupants, or both.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein step (c) further comprises receiving the listening zone control signal at a telematics unit of the vehicle and passing the control signal to a microphone system in the vehicle.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein step (d) further comprises supplying to the telematics unit audio received from a microphone identified by the control signal.

15. A vehicle having vehicle electronics that includes a plurality of vehicle system modules each having a processor and computer readable memory that contains instructions such that the modules together operate in response to execution of the instructions by the processors to carry out the following steps:

(a) detecting a vehicle collision using a crash detection module;

(b) sending a crash notification to a call center via a telematics unit in response to step (a);

(c) receiving via the telematics unit a listening zone control signal identifying at least one of a plurality of listening zones in the vehicle; and

(d) supplying audio received from the identified listening zone(s) to the call center via a voice call between the telematics unit and call center.