Combination electronic road guidance and communication system for vehicles
First Claim
1. In a system for guiding road vehicles respectively to destinations selected by their owners or drivers, comprising inductive transmitter/receiver installations including subsurface inductive field generating and sensing loops set at various locations in roadways, said installations being connected together in a traffic information system, and inductive transmitter/receiver apparatus installed in road vehicles, connected to vehicle-mounted inductive field generating/sensing means and associated with means for entering selected destination indicia for transmission and means for displaying recieved information, said transmitter/receiver installations and apparatus being constituted so as to transmit and receive digitally encoded signals, the improvement of providing in said system, for built-in access from said road vehicles to a telephone communication network, apparatus comprising:
- at least some of said roadway transmitter/receiver installations set in parking and/or roadside pause areas for exchange of signals with temporarily stationary vehicles and including modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment connected to said subsurface loops and activateable to establish two-way connections with a telephone communication network;
modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment in said road vehicle connected to said vehicle-mounted loops of the respective vehicles and selectively activatable to supersede said transmitter/receiver apparatus for digitally encoded signals and to cooperate with said modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment of said installations set in parking and/or roadside pause areas for establishing and holding telephone communications between a vehicle and said telephone communication network,means being also provided for generation and response to telephone supervisory signals for initiating and terminating telephone calls and for generation of selective calling signals in said vehicles for directing telephone calls,and means responsive to vehicle motion for blocking activation of said modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment while said vehicle is traveling.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An automobile equipped with the vehicular portion of a traffic information and guidance system utilizing exchange of data between vehicles and the rest of the system through inductive coupling with loops set at various places in roadways, is provided with two-way telephone communication possibilities at places where roadway loops are provided where a car can stop for making a telephone call, as for example in a parking space. Only small amounts of equipment need to be added to the vehicle and to the fixed installations to permit telephone communication between the vehicle and telephones in a public network. Separate receivers and transmitters for speech communication operated with amplitude or frequency modulation can be switched in, or else the speech signals can be converted into pulse code modulation and simply supplied through input/output units to the data transmitter/receiver of the traffic information system. The telephone calling features are enabled only when the travel path measuring device of the traffic information system is at rest, but the vehicle can be reached while in motion by a paging system to ask the driver to stop at the next telephone communication location.
18 Citations
16 Claims
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1. In a system for guiding road vehicles respectively to destinations selected by their owners or drivers, comprising inductive transmitter/receiver installations including subsurface inductive field generating and sensing loops set at various locations in roadways, said installations being connected together in a traffic information system, and inductive transmitter/receiver apparatus installed in road vehicles, connected to vehicle-mounted inductive field generating/sensing means and associated with means for entering selected destination indicia for transmission and means for displaying recieved information, said transmitter/receiver installations and apparatus being constituted so as to transmit and receive digitally encoded signals, the improvement of providing in said system, for built-in access from said road vehicles to a telephone communication network, apparatus comprising:
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at least some of said roadway transmitter/receiver installations set in parking and/or roadside pause areas for exchange of signals with temporarily stationary vehicles and including modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment connected to said subsurface loops and activateable to establish two-way connections with a telephone communication network; modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment in said road vehicle connected to said vehicle-mounted loops of the respective vehicles and selectively activatable to supersede said transmitter/receiver apparatus for digitally encoded signals and to cooperate with said modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment of said installations set in parking and/or roadside pause areas for establishing and holding telephone communications between a vehicle and said telephone communication network, means being also provided for generation and response to telephone supervisory signals for initiating and terminating telephone calls and for generation of selective calling signals in said vehicles for directing telephone calls, and means responsive to vehicle motion for blocking activation of said modulated wave transmitter/receiver equipment while said vehicle is traveling. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. In a system for guiding road vehicles to destinations respectively selected by their owners or drivers, comprising inductive transmitter/receiver installations including subsurface inductive field generating and sensing loops set at various locations in roadways, said installations being connected together in a road traffic information system, and inductive transmitter/receiver apparatus installed in road vehicles, connected to vehicle-mounted inductive field generating/sensing means and associated with means for entering selected destination inditia for transmission and means for displaying received information, said transmitter/receiver installations and apparatus being constituted so as to transmit and receive digitally encoded signals, the improvement of providing, in said system, built-in access from said road vehicles to a telephone communication network, comprising:
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at least some of said roadway transmitter/receiver installations set in parking and/or roadside pause areas for exchange of signals with temporarily stationary vehicles and including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion means respectively for incoming and outgoing signals of at least one telephone line and input/output units for each of said conversion means interposed between the respective said conversion means and transmitter/receiver portions of said installations; analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion means respectively for the transmitter and receiver portion of a telephone handset and input/output units for each of said conversion means interposed between them and said transmitter/receiver apparatus installed in road vehicles and constituted so as to transmit and receive digitally-encoded signals; and means for programming the transmission and reception of digitally encoded signals by said transmitter/receiver apparatus and installations for serving either said system for guiding road vehicles or providing telephone communication, according to whether a road vehicle is stopped at the location of one of said roadway installations and a telephone handset in said vehicle has been displaced from its inactive position. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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Specification