SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING PARKING SPACES FOR A COMMUNITY OF USERS

• US 20150348415A1
• Filed: 08/10/2015
• Published: 12/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Anagog Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Anagog Ltd.
• Inventors: LEVY, Gil, AIZENBUD, Yaron
• Granted Patent: US 9,830,819 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3685 the POI's being parking facilities
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/005 including pedestrian guidance indicator
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/14 indicating individual free spaces in parking areas
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/144 on portable or mobile units, e.g. personal digital assistant [PDA]
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/147 where the parking area is within an open public zone, e.g. city centre
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/027 using movement velocity, acceleration information

Abstract

A mobile communications device includes a locator unit to receive and process information regarding a current location for the mobile communications device, a parking status determination unit to determine a parking status for the device based on at least changes in the current location, and a communication unit to forward the parking status to a parking community processor. A method includes determining a parking status of a vehicle associated with a person as a function of movement of a personal mobile communications device.

Claims

1-30. -30. (canceled)

31. A method comprising:

obtaining acceleration of the mobile device;

based on the acceleration and without user input, the mobile device determining a driving status of the mobile device indicative of whether the mobile device is in a driving state or in a non-driving state.

32. The method of claim 31, wherein said obtaining comprises at least one of the following steps:

sampling a locator unit of the mobile device to compute the acceleration; and

receiving acceleration information from an accelerometer of the mobile device.

33. The method of claim 31, wherein the non-driving state is a parking state.

34. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium retaining program instructions, which instructions when read by a processor of a mobile device, cause the processor to perform a method comprising:

obtaining acceleration of the mobile device;

based on the acceleration and without user input, the mobile device determining a driving status of the mobile device indicative of whether the mobile device is in a driving status or in a non-driving status.

35. A method comprising:

in response to a search query, searching, by a computing device, a repository to identify a list of results, wherein each result is associated with an address;

determining, by the computing device, parking availability in an area in the vicinity of each of said addresses; and

presenting to a user the list of results, wherein said presenting provides for each result at least an indication of the current parking availability associated with the result.

36. The method of claim 35, wherein said determining is based on an available parking database that is derived from a community of members based on tracking movements of the members and without having prior knowledge of existence of parking spaces at given locations.

37. The method of claim 35, wherein said searching is performed by a search engine search web pages relating to the search query.

38. The method of claim 35, wherein the repository comprises a set of services, wherein the address associated with a service is a business address where the service is available.

39. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium retaining program instructions, which instructions when read by a processor of a mobile device, cause the processor to perform a method comprising:

obtaining acceleration of the mobile device;

based on the acceleration and without user input, the mobile device determining a driving status of the mobile device indicative of whether the mobile device is in a driving status or in a non-driving status.

40. A method comprising:

receiving parking status messages from members of a parking community, wherein said messages are generated automatically by mobile devices of the members of the parking community without user input and without having a priori knowledge of locations of usable parking spaces;

analyzing the parking status messages to derive an available parking database relating to a variety of locations; and

providing parking availability information to a user, wherein the parking availability information relates to a location selected from the variety of locations.

41. A method comprising:

receiving parking status messages from members of a parking community, said messages indicating at least a current location and a parking status, wherein said messages are generated automatically by mobile devices of the members of the parking community and without user input;

mapping, by the computing device, said parking statuses per said locations to derive a persistent representation of usable parking spaces; and

whereby the computing device generating a persistent representation of usable parking spaces in a variety of locations without having prior knowledge of the existence of said usable parking spaces at the variety of locations.

42. The method according to claim 41 further comprising:

identifying clusters of said usable parking spaces indicative of a parking facility location, wherein said identifying is performed without having prior knowledge of the existence of the parking facility location; and

analyzing parking patterns from said parking status messages to determine one or more locations for an entrance to or an exit from said parking facility location, wherein the determined one or more locations are different than locations of the said usable parking spaces, wherein said parking status messages indicate at least a recent history of locations.