U.S. patent number 6,748,306 [Application Number 09/894,488] was granted by the patent office on 2004-06-08 for document communication systems for use in automobiles.
This patent grant is currently assigned to Xerox Corporation. Invention is credited to Robert F. Lipowicz.
United States Patent |
6,748,306 |
Lipowicz |
June 8, 2004 |
Document communication systems for use in automobiles
Abstract
A document device, including an input scanner and printer, is
installed in an automobile. The document device can transmit and
receive image data wirelessly, and further interacts with a Global
Positioning System (GPS) device within the automobile to determine
the location of the automobile. Aspects of documents based on
received image data, and the destinations of transmitted image
data, can be made dependent on the location of the automobile at
any time. Received image data is retained in memory and printed out
when the car is in a predetermined condition, such as being turned
on.
Inventors: |
Lipowicz; Robert F. (Fairport,
NY) |
Assignee: |
Xerox Corporation (Stamford,
CT)
|
Family
ID: |
25403140 |
Appl.
No.: |
09/894,488 |
Filed: |
June 28, 2001 |
Current U.S.
Class: |
701/36;
342/357.31; 455/426.1; 455/462 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G01M
17/00 (20130101) |
Current International
Class: |
G01M
17/00 (20060101); H04M 011/00 () |
Field of
Search: |
;701/36,301,27,98,214,23,24,33 ;340/903,436,902,988,425.5,539
;342/455 ;455/462,557 ;348/358 |
References Cited
[Referenced By]
U.S. Patent Documents
Other References
"About OnStar: FAQ"
--http://www.onstar.com/visitors/html/ao_fag.htm--(6 pages), no
date. .
"Xerox Launches Industry's First System to Send Documents by Cell
Phones, Pagers"--Feb. 22, 2000--(4 pages)..
|
Primary Examiner: Black; Thomas G.
Assistant Examiner: To; Tuan C
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Hutter; R.
Parent Case Text
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
Cross-reference is hereby made to the following application,
assigned to the assignee hereof: U.S. Ser. No. 09/449,346, filed
Nov. 24, 1999, entitled "Using Positioning as a Tool for Locating
Publicly Available Resources and now abandoned."
Claims
What is claimed is:
1. A method of operating a document device installed in an
automobile, the document device including a printer, a memory, and
means for accepting external signals, comprising the steps of:
accepting external signals and storing the external signals as
input image data in the memory; determining an operating condition
of the automobile; and as a result of the automobile being in a
predetermined operating condition, indicating that input image data
is in the memory.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined operating
condition is that the automobile is turned on.
3. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of printing
the input image data in the memory.
4. The method of claim 3, the printing step further comprising the
step of combining the input image data with pre-stored image data
in the memory to yield a printed document.
5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of printing
the input image data in the memory in response to the automobile
being in a predetermined operating condition.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the predetermined operating
condition for the printing step is that the automobile is
stationary.
7. A method of operating a document device installed in an
automobile, the document device including a printer, a memory, and
means for accepting external signals, comprising the steps of:
accepting external signals and storing the external signals as
input image data in the memory; when the automobile is in a
predetermined operating condition, indicating that input image data
is in the memory; and displaying a title related to a set of input
image data in the memory.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the displaying step occurs in
response to the automobile being in a predetermined operating
condition.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein the predetermined operating
condition for the displaying step is that the automobile is
stationary.
10. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of
determining a location of the automobile; and affecting an aspect
of the input image data in memory as a result of said
determination.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined operating
condition is that the automobile is stationary.
12. The method of claim 8, wherein the predetermined operating
condition is that the automobile is turned on.
13. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a selection
interface to enable a user to cause printing an image related to
the input image data.
14. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining that the
automobile is stationary; and printing an image related to the
input image data if the automobile is stationary.
15. The method of claim 7, further comprising providing a selection
interface to enable a user to cause printing an image related to
the input image data.
16. The method of claim 7, further comprising determining that the
automobile is stationary; and printing an image related to the
input image data if the automobile is stationary.
Description
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the transmission of documents in
the context of document devices, such as printers and scanners,
which are installed in automobiles.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Document devices exploiting digital technology, such as electronic
printers, input scanners, facsimiles, digital copiers, and the
like, are well known in the office context. Another possible useful
context for such document devices is in automobiles. In the
automobile context, certain unique requirements and opportunities
arise which are not anticipated in the office context. The present
invention is directed to systems and methods which address these
requirements and opportunities.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,896,190 and 5,420,701 show designs of highly
miniaturized, battery-powered document devices, such as usable as
facsimile devices.
The MobileDoc.TM. system, described in a press release entitled
"Xerox.RTM. Launches Industry's First System to Send Documents by
Cell Phones, Pagers," describes a wireless means for transmitting
and retrieving image data relating to documents. An overview of the
system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,321.
The OnStar.TM. system, information about which is available as of
the filing hereof at www.onstar.com, is a system in which a central
information source, which may include a human advisor, can directly
contact a particular automobile and interact with the automobile,
such as by remotely unlocking doors, or detecting that the airbags
have been activated. The means for this contact can be through a
direct satellite connection, or a public cellular-phone system.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a
method of operating a document device installed in an automobile,
the document device including a printer, a memory, and means for
accepting external signals, comprising the steps of accepting
external signals and storing the external signals as input image
data in the memory, and when the automobile is turned on,
indicating that input image data is in the memory.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a
method of operating a document device installed in an automobile,
the document device including a selection interface, printer, a
memory, and a transceiver for sending and accepting signals,
comprising the steps of selecting, at the selection interface, a
title relating to a data set; sending a signal related to the title
to a station; and receiving from the station image signals related
to the title, the printer printing an image based on the image
signals.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a
method of operating a document device installed in an automobile,
the document device including a printer, comprising the steps of
accepting an instruction from outside the automobile; and, as a
result of receiving said instruction, making image data available
to be printed by the printer.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a
method of communicating to a document device, the document device
including a printer, comprising the steps of wirelessly
transmitting to the document device an instruction; and, as a
result of receiving said instruction, the document device making
image data available to be printed by the printer.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a
method of operating a document device, the document device having
associated therewith an input scanner for recording image data,
means for determining a location of the document device, and means
for transmitting image data comprising the steps of: recording
image data; determining a location of the document device;
selecting a destination a result of the determining step; and
wirelessly transmitting at least a portion of the image data to the
selected destination.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is a systems view of various elements of a "document device"
according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 shows how a document device such as shown in FIG. 1 would
look as installed in the dashboard of an automobile.
FIG. 3 shows a scenario of location-dependent printing according to
one aspect of the present invention.
FIG. 4 shows a scenario of location-dependent scanning and image
transmission according to one aspect of the present invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Prefatory to a discussion of an embodiment of the present
invention, the following terms used in the specification and claims
herein shall be defined.
"Installed" shall mean connected to an electrical system which is
otherwise significantly operative of an automobile. The electrical
system can be functional to at least some extent when the
automobile is not in use.
A "predetermined operating condition" of an automobile can be any
condition in which an automobile may be, such as: off, on, moving,
on but stationary, on but having been stationary for a
predetermined period of time, in gear or in park or neutral, etc.
"Turned on" shall mean that the automobile is being interacted with
by a user; it need not mean that the engine of the automobile is
running.
"Signals" or "image signals" shall mean electrical or wireless
signals which can in some way be interpreted as image data. As
such, the signals can be in a CCITT facsimile format, a digital
format such as TIFF, ASCII, Microsoft.RTM. Word.TM., pdf, JPEG, or
any format that comes into use.
A "printer" shall be defined as a set of hardware and software
which accepts data of any format or combination of formats and
renders therefrom an image on a substrate, such as paper. Any
printing technology, such as xerography or ink-jet, can be
contemplated. Typically such a printer will include a paper
supply.
An "input scanner" or "scanner" is any device which records an
image and renders it as digital data. Typically such a scanner
includes a paper feeding mechanism and a photosensitive device. In
the claims, the term "scanner" can include digital cameras of any
kind.
"Station-to-station communication" means communication between a
source and a specifically addressed destination. Examples of this
include cellular telephony or electronic mail, although other types
of communication may come under this definition.
"Direct wireless communication" means wireless communication from a
wireless (such as radio, microwave, or IR) transmitter to one or a
large number of possible receivers. This term includes ground- or
satellite-based systems.
"Displaying" can mean any type of visual, audio or other direct
communication to a human user. As such, the term can include
showing a message on an electronic (such as LCD) display, printing
out a message with a printer, or giving an audio signal.
The "title" associated with any set of data is any relatively small
set of data (such as a few words) which identifies, or even notes
the existence of (e.g., "You have electronic mail"), a larger set
of data.
A "selection interface" is any means by which a user in an
automobile can interact with the document device in the automobile,
such as use of hard buttons, touchscreen, voice commands, or
submitting a hard-copy sheet with instructions thereon to a
scanner.
FIG. 1 is a systems view of various elements of what can be called
a "document device" according to an embodiment of the present
invention. The document device is intended to be installed in an
automobile, as described above. The document device is operatively
associated with electrical system 99 of a particular
automobile.
The main hardware elements of a typical document device are a
printer 100, input scanner 102 (which could accept inputs from a
digital camera such as 104), and a display 106. As will be shown
below, these hardware elements are advantageously These elements
are controlled via a CPU 110, although depending on a particular
implementation, the CPU can comprise one or more microprocessors or
other devices.
The CPU 110 further controls other data-handling elements, which in
turn can accept data from scanner 102 or send data to printer 100.
Such elements can include a fax board 112, an e-mail server 114,
and a browser 116. As is well known, any of these elements can be
comprised of hardware and software for its purpose. Any of these
elements can in turn make use of an on-board memory 118, which can
be of any type (or combination of types) known in the art, specific
uses of which will be described in detail below.
The CPU 110 further controls communication devices, for sending or
receiving data of various formats and types from outside the
automobile. Among these devices, according to various
implementations, can be a cellular telephone device 120, a
satellite or other direct-wireless transceiver 122, and a device
124 for exploiting the Global Positioning System (GPS), such as to
locate the automobile at a point on the Earth. Data going to or
from these devices can interact with the data-handling elements as
needed.
FIG. 2 shows how a document device such as shown in FIG. 1 would
look as installed in the dashboard of an automobile. Slots for
paper output from printer 100 and circulation of sheets through
scanner 102 are apparent, as well as display 106, which can be in
the form of a touch-screen.
A document device, having any or all of the above-described
elements, can perform functions which are uniquely suited for the
context of communicating to and from an automobile. A number of
scenarios, and how the document device operates within them
according to the present invention, will be described.
One unique situation which occurs when a document device is
installed in an automobile is if image data is submitted from an
external source while the car is effectively "off." With modern
automobiles, there is always residual electrical activity (clock,
alarm system) going on even when the key is not in the ignition and
the engine is off; but to print out a document (such as an incoming
facsimile) while the car is in such a condition may cause an
unacceptable drain on the car's battery.
According to one aspect of the present invention, image data of
whatever format entering the automobile by whatever means (cell
phone 120, satellite transceiver 122, etc.) is stored in memory
118. When the car is subsequently turned on, the display 106 shows
a message to the effect that a facsimile, e-mail message or
satellite broadcast message has arrived in memory, and solicits the
user to print out the related image. The user can assent to the
printout through a selection interface, as defined above. The image
data is then accessed from memory 118 and printed out via printer
100. Alternately, printout of all received e-mails, faxes, and
other messages can be made automatic upon turning on the car.
In some jurisdictions, certain activities, such as use of a
telephone, which may interfere with use of a car, may be forbidden.
For safety reasons, the apparatus according to the present
invention may provide restrictions on the use of certain aspects of
the apparatus, depending on the operating condition of the
automobile at a given time. For example, a display 116 may be
disabled when the car is moving, in gear, or if the motor is
running, so that a driver of the car will not be distracted by the
display. If the display 116 is thus unavailable at a particular
time, a message that would be displayed for any reason can
alternately be printed out via printer 100; or, the system can wait
until the car is stationary (either when detecting the car is in
park, or if the car has been stationary for a certain amount of
time) before displaying a message. Alternately, messages which
would otherwise be displayed can be converted, such as through
voice-simulation-technology accessible to CPU 110, to audio
messages played to the driver while the car is moving.
Another scenario facilitated by the document device is remote
retrieval of documents. A user in an automobile who wishes to
obtain a document from a remote source (such as the computer at
some home base) can contact the source by means such as cell phone
120: in such a case, the user can deal with a human representative
at the source, or perhaps dial in a special number through the
phone system. In response thereto, the source sends the desired
image data to the document device in any format, such as facsimile,
ASCII, or pdf.
A variation of this scenario is that the source sends the desired
information which is subsequently combined with image data
pre-stored in memory 118, yielding a complete document. This method
is useful when printing sales collaterals: information relating the
standard brochure for a product being sold can be retained in
memory 118, while up-to-date pricing or availability information is
sent upon request. The pricing information can be delivered to the
document device in a highly space-efficient format, such as ASCII
characters, which are then formatted within a larger document
having a more sophisticated format such as pdf, yielding a seamless
image.
Another variation of the remote-retrieval concept is to have the
user in the car directly access a desired image to be printed, by
navigating the World-Wide Web. The most straightforward way to do
this, given the state of common technology at the time of filing
hereof, would be to use the cell-phone device 120 as a fax modem to
a laptop or other computer within the car. As this may prove
expensive, a service could be provided in which communication to
and from the car, either through cell-phone or other technology, is
minimized given a particular purpose, with the "service," residing
at a home base, performing any communication-intensive activities.
For instance, if a salesman in a car wanted a relatively unusual
document from the internet (sales collateral from a competitor's
website, for example), instead of navigating the internet in a
manner which could consume a large amount of cell-phone time, he
contacts the service and selects, either by speaking with or faxing
to a human representative or by using a relatively simple selection
screen on display 116 (or even using a paper-based checklist
interface scanned into scanner 102) a general request of a type of
information he wants. Subsequently, the service locates the desired
data and sends it to the car in whatever format (fax, ASCII, pdf,
etc.) is most desirable under a given set of circumstances. The
data can arrive at the car while the car is moving or parked, to be
made available for printing when the car is in a predetermined
operating condition (the car being turned on, if the car were
parked when the data arrived; or the car becoming parked, if the
car were moving when the data arrived). It is also possible that a
user in a first car could request of the service that the desired
data be sent to a second car.
The GPS capability within an automobile, such as provided by GPS
device 124 within a particular automobile, can facilitate another
scenario, the printing of location-based documents. GPS device 124
can inform CPU 110 of the precise location of the automobile at all
times. This information can be exploited in situations where an
image is desired to be sent only to automobiles within a certain
area. For instance, if a central office wanted to send a document
to only those automobiles in the Chicago metropolitan area, the
data for the document could be broadcast by satellite or
broadcast-faxed to in effect every car in a much wider area, along
with an instruction for each document device to retain the data in
memory 118 for printing only if the automobile is in the desired
geographical range, as determined by the GPS device 124 within each
car. Those cars which are determined, by their on-board GPS
devices, to be outside the desired geographical range, may receive
data, but (depending on the specific implementation, as manifested
in their CPU's) will not store the data in memory 118, or will
accept the data but not solicit the user to print it out.
A more sophisticated variation of location-based documents is to
cause the document devices in each of a population of cars to print
somewhat different documents depending on the determined location
of each car as determined by the GPS device 124. An overview of the
location-dependent printing scenario is shown in FIG. 3. For
instance, a central office wants to call a set of emergency
meetings of its sales force who are out in a fleet of automobiles.
Salesmen should report to the local office closest to where they
happen to be at the moment. Using the document device of the
present invention in each car, a single broadcast message (fax or
satellite) is sent out to the fleet, and within each document
device the GPS location is noted. Depending on the determined
location of a particular document device, different subsets of the
total broadcast message can be printed, most likely only those
portions of the broadcast message relevant to persons within a
particular area (in the claim language, this comes under the
category of "affecting an aspect" of the image signals to be
printed). In the sales force example, those cars which are near
Chicago would have printed out for them (through printer 100) only
a map showing how to get to the Chicago meeting, while cars near
Indianapolis would have printed out only a map showing how to get
to the Indianapolis meeting, and cars in neither area would not
have printed out anything; yet, in the single broadcast message,
information relating to both meetings would have been sent.
Within each car in a population of cars spread over a geographical
area, discriminating software within CPU 110 receives from the
central source (either through satellite communication or a
broadcast fax) a single message, comprising image data in any
format, which has further associated therewith special instructions
about the location dependence of the message. The potentially
printable portion of the message is retained in memory 118. The
special instructions are addressed to appropriate software
controlled by CPU 110. These special instructions can be summarized
as: if location of car=[predetermined geographical area], then
retrieve from memory and print [predetermined subset of message
data]; there can be as many if-then statements as different
location-specific versions of the message.
A variation of the technique is to have a central source send only
the special instructions to the population of cars, and have the
printable image data pre-loaded in memory 118: in other words, the
central source would simply instruct the document device in each
car to print out a pre-loaded message (the nature of which may be
made dependent on the location of the car as determined by the GPS
device in each car). Once again, in this and all scenarios, if a
particular car is "off" when the device therein receives the
message or instructions, when the car is turned on, the device
displays a message to the user that a message has been received,
and the user will have the option to print it out.
Another set of scenarios according to the present invention involve
location-based input scanning services. If it is desired to record
a hard-copy document image through scanner 102, or other types of
image through digital camera 104, the resulting image data can be
sent (in any format, such as facsimile, ASCII or pdf characters as
a result of an optical character recognition process, etc.) to an
external location in a manner which is dependent on the location of
the document device at the time of the scanning operation, as
determined by GPS device 124. A simple implementation of the above
scenario is shown in FIG. 4. For instance, if an insurance adjuster
operating from her automobile wishes to transmit an image of an
auto insurance card from some essentially random location,
information from the GPS device 124 at the time of scanning can be
used both to provide a time and location stamping of the
transmission of the image data; and further, to enable the
destination of the scanned image data to be automatically and
invisibly dependent on the location from which the information was
scanned. If the insurance company is set up so that car accidents
which occur in New York should be reported to one fax number, while
accidents which occur in New Jersey should be reported to another
fax number. (The system could also conceivably work with a
scan-to-e-mail system.) Assuming the adjuster will be scanning and
transmitting the insurance cards from a location very close to the
accident scene, the GPS system can be used to determine the exact
location of the accident, and thereby direct the information to the
correct fax number, all invisibly to the adjuster using the
document device in her car.
At a single automobile at some location detectable by the GPS
system, a hard-copy document or digital photograph is scanned or
entered into memory 118. When the user hits a send instruction, the
GPS device 124 within the car tells software controlled by the CPU
110 the current location of the automobile. The software has any
number of if-then commands, each of which looks generally like: if
location of car=[predetermined geographic zone], then send image
data to [predetermined fax or e-mail destination].
* * * * *
References