Method and apparatus for obtaining weather information from road-going vehicles
First Claim
1. A method of determining weather information for one or more geographic areas, comprising:
- a) collecting weather-related data in conjunction with geographic position-determining data and vehicle equipment operation data at a plurality of road-going vehicles in the one or more geographic areas;
b) receiving, from each of said plurality of road-going vehicles, a message comprised of said collected weather-related data in conjunction with geographic position-determining data and vehicle equipment operation data, along with corresponding time data, in a remote weather-determining system;
c) processing said data received from said plurality of road-going vehicles in said remote weather-determining system to determine weather information for the one or more geographic areas, wherein said processing includes statistical processing of the vehicle equipment operation data by performing a majority vote decision related to a number of said plurality of road-going vehicles reporting windshield wiper on versus windshield wiper off conditions and/or evaluating a number of the plurality of on-road vehicles reporting wiper speeds at or above one or more thresholds, wherein said processing further includes using time-based weighting of reported windshield wiper speeds to generate precipitation-related weather information as an aggregate of individually reported wiper speed data;
wherein the one or more geographic areas correspond to the position-determining data of said plurality of road-going vehicles, further wherein said remote weather-determining system comprises one or more processing systems, local control and monitoring interfaces, as well as communication interfaces to at least provide communication links to satellite and/or cellular based communications of said plurality of road-going vehicles, and wherein said one or more processing systems of said remote weather-determining system utilize a data aggregator to pre-process incoming weather-related data and vehicle equipment operation data such that it is broken out by geographic area of interest, and further utilize a joint data processor to jointly process the weather-related data, as aggregated by the data aggregator, for one or more geographic areas of interest; and
d) transmitting the determined weather information from said weather-determining system to selected consumers.
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Abstract
In one embodiment taught herein, a plurality of road-going vehicles report weather-related data to a weather-determining system. For example, trucks and/or cars having in-vehicle information systems wirelessly transmit one or more items of weather-related data, such that the weather-determining system directly or indirectly receives the transmitted data. In turn, the weather-determining system jointly processes the weather-related data to determine weather information for one or more geographic areas corresponding to reported positions of the road-going vehicles. In one embodiment, the in-vehicle information systems comprise GPS-based position reporting systems installed in on-highway trucks and other fleet vehicles, and the weather-determining system comprises a modified position-tracking system, e.g., a modified network fleet management system. Weather-related data may be collected and processed for large numbers of vehicles across many geographic areas of interest, and the resulting weather information can be fed back to the road-going vehicles and/or provided to other consumers of weather information.
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Citations
34 Claims
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1. A method of determining weather information for one or more geographic areas, comprising:
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a) collecting weather-related data in conjunction with geographic position-determining data and vehicle equipment operation data at a plurality of road-going vehicles in the one or more geographic areas; b) receiving, from each of said plurality of road-going vehicles, a message comprised of said collected weather-related data in conjunction with geographic position-determining data and vehicle equipment operation data, along with corresponding time data, in a remote weather-determining system; c) processing said data received from said plurality of road-going vehicles in said remote weather-determining system to determine weather information for the one or more geographic areas, wherein said processing includes statistical processing of the vehicle equipment operation data by performing a majority vote decision related to a number of said plurality of road-going vehicles reporting windshield wiper on versus windshield wiper off conditions and/or evaluating a number of the plurality of on-road vehicles reporting wiper speeds at or above one or more thresholds, wherein said processing further includes using time-based weighting of reported windshield wiper speeds to generate precipitation-related weather information as an aggregate of individually reported wiper speed data; wherein the one or more geographic areas correspond to the position-determining data of said plurality of road-going vehicles, further wherein said remote weather-determining system comprises one or more processing systems, local control and monitoring interfaces, as well as communication interfaces to at least provide communication links to satellite and/or cellular based communications of said plurality of road-going vehicles, and wherein said one or more processing systems of said remote weather-determining system utilize a data aggregator to pre-process incoming weather-related data and vehicle equipment operation data such that it is broken out by geographic area of interest, and further utilize a joint data processor to jointly process the weather-related data, as aggregated by the data aggregator, for one or more geographic areas of interest; and d) transmitting the determined weather information from said weather-determining system to selected consumers. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A weather-determining system for one or more geographic areas, comprising:
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a) means for receiving from each of a plurality of road-going vehicles a message comprised of weather-related data in conjunction with geographic position-determining data and vehicle equipment operation data collected from said road-going vehicle, wherein said means for receiving is located remote from said road-going vehicles and comprises communication interfaces; b) means for processing said data received from said plurality of road-going vehicles to determine weather information for the one or more geographic areas, wherein said means for processing is also located remote from said road-going vehicles and comprises one or more processing systems and local control and monitoring interfaces, wherein said means for processing includes means for statistical processing of the vehicle equipment operation data by performing a majority vote decision related to a number of said plurality of road-going vehicles reporting windshield wiper on versus windshield wiper off conditions and/or evaluating a number of the plurality of on-road vehicles reporting wiper speeds at or above one or more thresholds, wherein said means for processing further includes means for using time-based weighting of reported windshield wiper speeds to generate precipitation-related weather information as an aggregate of individually reported wiper speed data, and wherein said one or more processing systems comprises a data aggregator to preprocess the incoming weather-related data and vehicle equipment operation data such that it is broken out by geographic area of interest, and a joint data processor to jointly process the weather-related data, as aggregated by the data aggregator, for one or more geographic areas of interest; and c) means for transmitting the determined weather information from said weather-determining system to selected consumers, wherein said means for transmitting comprises communication interfaces. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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Specification