Method and apparatus for obtaining weather information from road-going vehicles

• US 7,999,702 B2
• Filed: 08/02/2006
• Issued: 08/16/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/02/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Omnitracs LLC (Solera Holdings Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Inventors: Doyle, Marquis D. III
• Primary Examiner(s): Mehmood; Jennifer
• Assistant Examiner(s): Fan; Hongmin
• Application Number:
  US11/498,971
• Publication Number:
  US 20080030370A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,840 Days
• Field of Search: 340/539.28, 340/995.12, 340/995.13, 340/601, 340/602, 702/3
• US Class Current: 340/995.12
• CPC Class Codes: G01W 1/00 Meteorology
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0962 having an indicator mounted inside the vehicle, e.g. giving voice messages
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/20 Monitoring the location of vehicles belonging to a group, e.g. fleet of vehicles, countable or determined number of vehicles

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.

Claims

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.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the vehicle equipment operation data to determine weather information for one or more geographic areas corresponding to reported positions of the road going vehicles comprises statistically processing one or more like items of vehicle equipment operation data collected for a same geographic area by two or more of the plurality of road-going vehicles, to thereby determine statistically reliable weather information for that geographic area.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving weather-related data from a plurality of road-going vehicles comprises, for a given one of the road-going vehicles, receiving one or more of temperature-related data and precipitation-related data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving one or more of temperature-related data and precipitation-related data comprises receiving ambient temperature readings obtained from a vehicle-based information system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving one or more of temperature-related data and precipitation-related data comprises receiving wiper speed information obtained from a vehicle-based information system, and inferring a precipitation condition from the wiper speed information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of processing the weather-related data that is received comprises statistically processing the weather-related data to determine statistically reliable weather information for the one or more geographic areas.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said transmitting step comprises providing the weather information to targeted ones of said plurality of road-going vehicles, and/or providing the weather information to one or more third-party providers of weather information for redistribution by such third-party providers.

8. A method according to claim 1, wherein said transmitting step comprises providing the weather information to those of said plurality of road-going vehicles for which the weather information is determined to be relevant.

9. The method of claim 8, which comprises the further step of determining relevancy of the weather information with respect to a particular road-going vehicle based on known route information, speed and known position and direction information for the particular road-going vehicle.

10. The method of claim 1, which prior to said receiving step includes the further step of transmitting periodic mobile initiated position reports (MIPRs) from each of said plurality of road-going vehicles, and wherein said MIPRs include one or more items of weather-related data in addition to position-related data.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein said message received from said road-going vehicles comprises at least one of ambient temperature data, wiper speed data and Antilock Braking System (ABS) data from one or more of said plurality of road-going vehicles in the one or more geographic areas, and wherein said step of processing weather-related data to determine weather information for the one or more geographic areas corresponding to reported positions of said road-going vehicles comprises at least one of inferring precipitation conditions, inferring freezing precipitation conditions or a risk thereof, and inferring hazardous road conditions, for the one or more geographic areas based on said data.

12. The method of claim 1, including the further step of providing said plurality of road-going vehicles with a respective in-vehicle information system having a processing system in the form of a Mobile Application Server, wherein said in-vehicle information system is furthermore provided with wireless communication interfaces, and a discrete signal interface for receiving directly measured weather-related data or vehicle systems information for inferential sensing of weather-related data.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of receiving a message comprises receiving messages at predetermined time intervals.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein said remote weather-determining system is a remote network management center having persistent or non-persistent communication links with the plurality of road-going vehicles.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein said collecting step includes collecting weather-related data at a first time interval and locally storing said data, and wherein said stored data is then batch-reported to said remote weather-determining system at a second, longer time interval.

16. A method according to claim 1, wherein said joint data processor collectively processes temperatures aggregated by said data aggregator from different ones of said road-going vehicles to obtain at least one of an average temperature, temperature deviations and gradients, and rates of change.

17. A weather-determining system for one or more geographic areas, comprising:

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.

18. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein said weather-determining system comprises all or part of a network management center having persistent or non-persistent communication links with the plurality of road-going vehicles.

19. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to jointly process the weather-related data received from two or more road-going vehicles for a given geographic area to determine statistically reliable weather information for that given geographic area.

20. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to statistically process one or more like items of vehicle equipment operation data collected for a same geographic area by two or more of the plurality of road-going vehicles, to thereby determine statistically reliable weather information for that geographic area.

21. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to receive reports from the plurality of road-going vehicles that include position-related data and corresponding weather-related data.

22. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to receive periodic mobile initiated position reports (MIPRs) from each road-going vehicle, wherein the MIPRs include one or more items of weather-related data in addition to position-related data.

23. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein the weather-determining system is configured, for a given one of the road-going vehicles, to receive one or more of temperature-related data and precipitation-related data.

24. The weather-determining system of claim 23, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to receive ambient temperature readings obtained from a vehicle-based information system as the temperature-related data.

25. The weather-determining system of claim 23, wherein the weather-determining system is configured to receive wiper speed information obtained from a vehicle-based information system as the precipitation-related data, and is further configured to infer a precipitation condition from the wiper speed information.

26. The weather-determining system of claim 17, which further comprises a respective in-vehicle information system having a processing system in the form of a Mobile Application Server for each of said road-going vehicles, wherein said in-vehicle information system is furthermore provided with wireless communication interfaces, and a discrete signal interface for receiving directly measured weather-related data or vehicle systems information for inferential sensing of weather-related data.

27. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein said weather-determining system is a remote system that is configured to receive Antilock Braking System (ABS) related data from one or more of said road-going vehicles in a given geographic area, and to infer hazardous road conditions for the given geographic area based at least in part on the ABS related data.

28. The weather-determining system of claim 17, which further comprises means for determining relevancy of the weather information with respect to a particular road-going vehicle based on of known route information, speed and known position and direction information for the particular road-going vehicle.

29. The weather-determining system of claim 26, wherein said in-vehicle information system further includes a vehicle data bus interface for receiving weather-related data or measurements from engine and vehicle management systems of said road-going vehicle.

30. The weather-determining system of claim 26, wherein said wireless communication interfaces are adapted to send Mobile Initiated Position Reports to said remote weather-determining system.

31. The weather-determining system of claim 26, wherein said in-vehicle information system further comprises a position-tracking system that is adapted to determine position-related data in conjunction with the weather-related data.

32. The weather-determining system of claim 31, wherein the position-tracking system is configured to periodically determine and report vehicle position data, and is further configured to correspondingly report weather-related data.

33. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein said weather-related data of said message is collected at a first time interval and locally stored, and wherein said stored data is then batch-reported to said means for receiving said message at a second, longer time interval.

34. The weather-determining system of claim 17, wherein said joint data processor collectively processes temperatures aggregated by said data aggregator from different ones of said road-going vehicles to obtain at least one of an average temperature, temperature deviations and gradients, and rates of change.