Remote Sensing of Vehicle Occupancy
First Claim
1. A system for use in an automobile or other roadway vehicle to determine the number of vehicle occupants within a specified transmission communication range, and to communicate occupancy status to a toll-collection infrastructure, the system comprising:
- one or more passive, non-contact seat occupancy detectors provided to a passenger-carrying vehicle excluding a weight detector and a seat restraint closure detector;
a transmitter for communicating to a roadway toll collection infrastructure system; and
a controller for receiving inputs from the one or more seat occupancy detectors, for determining based on the inputs which of a plurality of seats in the vehicle are likely occupied by a human occupants, for counting the human occupants and for transmitting the count via the transmitter to the toll collection infrastructure system.
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Accused Products
Abstract
One or more sensors are interfaced to a controller which in turn interfaces to a transponder in order to provide occupancy status of a vehicle. The one or more sensors determine the occupancy status of one or more of the seats in the vehicle, and report this to the controller. The controller determines an overall occupancy for the vehicle, and provides this information to the transponder. The transponder then communicates this information to a traffic monitoring or toll collection infrastructure, such as to a toll tag reading tower using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) wireless communication. The collected information may then be used to reduce or eliminate manual occupancy verification by police, and to enable incentive-based toll policy.
79 Citations
9 Claims
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1. A system for use in an automobile or other roadway vehicle to determine the number of vehicle occupants within a specified transmission communication range, and to communicate occupancy status to a toll-collection infrastructure, the system comprising:
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one or more passive, non-contact seat occupancy detectors provided to a passenger-carrying vehicle excluding a weight detector and a seat restraint closure detector; a transmitter for communicating to a roadway toll collection infrastructure system; and a controller for receiving inputs from the one or more seat occupancy detectors, for determining based on the inputs which of a plurality of seats in the vehicle are likely occupied by a human occupants, for counting the human occupants and for transmitting the count via the transmitter to the toll collection infrastructure system. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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Specification