CENTRALIZED PARKING PAYMENT AND MONITORING SYSTEM USINGGEO LOCATION ENABLED DEVICES

• US 20150213716A1
• Filed: 05/02/2013
• Published: 07/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/27/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sunil Goel
• Original Assignee: Sunil Goel
• Inventors: Aggarwal, Adityakumar Akshaikumar, Goel, Sunil
• Granted Patent: US 9,792,818 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 15/02 taking into account a variable factor such as distance or time, e.g. for passenger transport, parking systems or car rental systems G07B15/06 takes precedence; taximeters G07B13/00; parking meters per se G07F17/24; car rental systems per se G07B15/00
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/144 on portable or mobile units, e.g. personal digital assistant [PDA]
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/146 where the parking area is a limited parking space, e.g. parking garage, restricted space

Abstract

The present invention describes the system of centralized parking payment and monitoring, which uses geo-location enabled devices such as iPhone, android, RIM devices, mobile phones, pagers and wireless mobile computers.

Using such system person can get a parking receipt; do payment of parking in the paid parking area directly from his geo-location enabled devices without any intervention of any attendant.

Simultaneously, police or parking manager can also check the virtual parking receipt of the vehicle in the centralized parking system using Geo-location enable mobile device.

The big differences between this new solution is compared to existing solution are (1)

All the current solutions are identifying a particular parking spot instead of looking at holistic view of parking on a whole street or an unmanned parking area. Geo-location devices have 5-25 meters inaccuracy in identifying a position i.e. 1-5 parking spots inaccuracy. As a result, geo-location device cannot locate a particular parking spot. Thereby no public parking solution exists based on the geo-location based devices alone. In our solution, we re-engineered the business problem and instead of looking at a particular parking spot, the new process is dependent of parking of particular section of street or an unmanned parking lot—which we refer to ‘Parking Area’. The characteristic of Parking Area is that pricing and business apply to Parking Area as a whole unit. We are able to provide solution just based on geo-location based devices by combining concept of Parking Area with design of with parking application along with enforcement application. Parking Area will be divided in three level hierarchy Admin1, Admin2 & Admin3. (2)

This solution does not need any new devices to be installed or parking spots to be marked and entered in the parking application. It uses geo-location enabled devices to identify the location of the parking place.

Claims

1. The centralized parking system for a plurality of parking spaces, comprises of,

centralized cloud system (106) consisting of large number of virtual servers running on one or more physical servers depending on number of users,

geo location enabled device (102) for enforcement officer (105) which has one to more processors coupled with dynamic memory, flash memory to store the programs, GPS (Global positioning system) and display,

geo location enabled device (101) for the user (104) which has one or more processor with memory and display. Typically it will be smart phone which is carried by large number of users driving vehicles.

2. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said geo location enabled device (101, 102) is pager, ordinary mobile, smart phone, laptop or palmtop like device. In case of devices without GPS, LBS from carrier network will be used to identify the geo-location (026). It uses LBS to identify the Parking Area where the call is coming from

3. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein geo location enabled device is connected with centralized cloud system (106) and work without needing parking sensor, meters or markers.

4. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said parking system supports multiplicity of geo-location enabled devices, license plates, family sub accounts, default license plate per device and over-riding of the license plate in case of rental vehicle.

5. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein it supports multiple plans and their combination to implement parking payment system in any part of the city, on any road in the city with single or paid parking spaces throughout the city as a tourist visiting different parts of the city using day pass.

6. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said system has fraud detection (240) and notification system (241) to send alert the geo location enabled device (101, 102) of parking user (104) and parking enforcement officer (106).

7. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said system send alert message that virtual parking is still on to the geo location enabled device (101) of the user (104) when he is moving away from the parking area with speed of more than 10 miles/h.

8. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said geo location enabled device (101, 102) capture signal of GPS or LBS (Location based System) (109) or both to identify location of parking area and not of parking location (spot). The system tracks the vehicle by Parking Area (004, 059) instead of specific parking location (spot), Parking area is like a Geo-fencing of a large area such as a whole street or large parking area. This is a big change in process that supports current GPS or LBS technologies which cannot identify vehicle to parking slot can work very well with Parking Area, If there is another Parking Area very close by within the accuracy of the GPS or LBS then user is prompted to select between the Parking Areas where they are parking. The selection of Parking Areas given is based on the accuracy of GPS or LBS used to identify Parking Area,

9. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said parking system identifies vehicle parked in any parking area or even across parking Areas.

10. The centralized parking payment and monitoring system as claimed in claim 3, wherein said application has centralized data storage which store the profile data of the user with payment ethod, vehicle numbers and user address for enabling administrative to access and reporting the user and parking vendor payment profile.

11. The centralized parking system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the enforcement officer (106) check parking violation by running the enforcement program (FIG. 6) on his geo location enabled device (102) by entering the vehicle license number to check if the vehicle has virtual parking ticket or not.

12. Central cloud parking system (106) keep tracks of currently parked vehicle using Parking Area, Virtual Parking tickets and uses sophisticated Business Intelligence to generate reports to identify empty spaces and places where vehicles are not paying parking

13. A method of centralized parking system using geo location enabled devices that uses no devices or unique identification marking on the parking spot comprising following steps;

installing a parking program in geo-location enabled device (101) of the users (104) for identifying parking area,

clicking start button on the parking application,

identification of the location of the user (104) who is parking the vehicle (107) using simple mobile device even without GPS,

tracking of currently parked vehicle using parking area, virtual parking tickets and generating reports to identify empty spaces and places where vehicles are not paying parking,

installing an enforcement application on geo location enabled enforcement device of parking enforcement officer/police officer (105) to check the status if the vehicle has valid virtual parking ticket, connect to geo-location enabled device