Call center based zoned microphone control in a vehicle
First Claim
1. A method for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle, comprising the steps of:
- (a) receiving a communication at a call center from a vehicle indicating emergency services may be needed by one or more occupants of the vehicle and determining occupant position information indicating a location of one or more occupants within the vehicle, wherein the occupant position information is based on one or more of the following;
speech pickup from one or more microphones within a vehicle passenger compartment, a seatbelt sensor, a seat sensor, or a vision sensor;
(b) in response to step (a), sending a listening zone control signal to the vehicle from the call center via cellular transmission, wherein the call center remotely controls the one or more microphones within the vehicle passenger compartment via the control signal, wherein during step (b) the call center'"'"'s remote control of the one or more microphones does not require human actuation of the one or more microphones, wherein remote control of the one or more microphones isolates passenger compartment audio coming from at least one of the plurality of listening zones; and
(c) monitoring the passenger compartment audio associated with the at least one of the plurality of listening zones at the call center over a voice call.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method and system for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle. The method involves detecting a potential emergency condition, sending an emergency notification to a call center, receiving a listening zone control signal identifying at least one of a plurality of listening zones in the vehicle, and supplying audio received from the identified listening zones(s) to the call center via a voice call between the vehicle and call center.
11 Citations
14 Claims
-
1. A method for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle, comprising the steps of:
-
(a) receiving a communication at a call center from a vehicle indicating emergency services may be needed by one or more occupants of the vehicle and determining occupant position information indicating a location of one or more occupants within the vehicle, wherein the occupant position information is based on one or more of the following;
speech pickup from one or more microphones within a vehicle passenger compartment, a seatbelt sensor, a seat sensor, or a vision sensor;(b) in response to step (a), sending a listening zone control signal to the vehicle from the call center via cellular transmission, wherein the call center remotely controls the one or more microphones within the vehicle passenger compartment via the control signal, wherein during step (b) the call center'"'"'s remote control of the one or more microphones does not require human actuation of the one or more microphones, wherein remote control of the one or more microphones isolates passenger compartment audio coming from at least one of the plurality of listening zones; and (c) monitoring the passenger compartment audio associated with the at least one of the plurality of listening zones at the call center over a voice call. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
-
-
9. A method for providing call center emergency services to one or more occupants of a vehicle having a plurality of listening zones within a passenger compartment of the vehicle, comprising the steps of:
-
(a) monitoring the passenger compartment for occupant position information involving the vehicle, wherein the monitoring step includes receiving speech pickup from one or more microphones associated with the plurality of listening zones and storing occupant position information based on the received speech pickup;
then,(b) detecting a potential emergency condition, wherein the emergency condition includes a collision event involving the vehicle; (c) sending an emergency notification of the collision event to a call center; (d) in response to step (c), receiving a listening zone control signal at a telematics unit in the vehicle and from the call center identifying at least one of the plurality of listening zones in the vehicle based at least in part on the occupant position information; and (e) supplying audio received from the at least one identified listening zone to the call center via a voice call between the vehicle telematics unit and the call center. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13)
-
-
14. A vehicle having vehicle electronics that includes a plurality of vehicle system modules each having a processor and memory storing a non-transitory, computer program product executable by the respective processors, wherein the respective computer program products contain instructions such that the modules together operate in response to execution of the instructions by the processors to carry out the following steps:
-
(a) monitoring a passenger compartment for occupant position information involving the vehicle, wherein the monitoring step includes receiving speech pickup from one or more microphones associated with a plurality of listening zones and storing occupant position information based on the received speech pickup;
then,(b) detecting a vehicle collision using a crash detection module in the vehicle; (c) sending a crash notification to a call center via a telematics unit in the vehicle in response to step (b); (d) receiving from the call center via the telematics unit a listening zone control signal identifying at least one of the plurality of listening zones in the vehicle based at least in part on the occupant position information; and (e) in response to step (d), supplying audio received from the identified listening zone(s) to the call center via a voice call between the telematics unit and the call center, wherein during step (e) supplying the audio to the call center does not require human actuation.
-
Specification