Patent Application
20050275406
In today's wireless environment numerous devices are present and may be connected wirelessly. The numbers and variety of devices with varying functionality provides a dynamic usage environment creating challenges for improved interconnectivity.
Thus, there is a continuing need for better ways for wireless devices in the wireless environment to communicate and provide functionality seamlessly and assist the user of the wireless device in ease of operation.
The subject matter regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the concluding portion of the specification. The invention, however, both as to organization and method of operation, together with objects, features, and advantages thereof, may best be understood by reference to the following detailed description when read with the accompanying drawings in which:
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.
In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the invention. However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures, components and circuits have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the present invention.
Some portions of the detailed description that follows are presented in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bits or binary digital signals within a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions and representations may be the techniques used by those skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art.
An algorithm is here, and generally, considered to be a self-consistent sequence of acts or operations leading to a desired result. These include physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers or the like. It should be understood, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities.
Unless specifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the following discussions, it is appreciated that throughout the specification discussions utilizing terms such as “processing,” “computing,” “calculating,” “determining,” or the like, refer to the action and/or processes of a computer or computing system, or similar electronic computing device, that manipulate and/or transform data represented as physical, such as electronic, quantities within the computing system's registers and/or memories into other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the computing system's memories, registers or other such information storage, transmission or display devices.
Embodiments of the present invention may include apparatuses for performing the operations herein. An apparatus may be specially constructed for the desired purposes, or it may comprise a general purpose computing device selectively activated or reconfigured by a program stored in the device. Such a program may be stored on a storage medium, such as, but not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, compact disc read only memories (CD-ROMs), magnetic-optical disks, read-only memories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), electrically programmable read-only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable and programmable read only memories (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, or any other type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, and capable of being coupled to a system bus for a computing device.
The processes and displays presented herein are not inherently related to any particular computing device or other apparatus. Various general purpose systems may be used with programs in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the desired method. The desired structure for a variety of these systems will appear from the description below. In addition, embodiments of the present invention are not described with reference to any particular programming language. It will be appreciated that a variety of programming languages may be used to implement the teachings of the invention as described herein. In addition, it should be understood that operations, capabilities, and features described herein may be implemented with any combination of hardware (discrete or integrated circuits) and software.
Use of the terms “coupled” and “connected”, along with their derivatives, may be used. It should be understood that these terms are not intended as synonyms for each other. Rather, in particular embodiments, “connected” may be used to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other. “Coupled” my be used to indicated that two or more elements are in either direct or indirect (with other intervening elements between them) physical or electrical contact with each other, and/or that the two or more elements co-operate or interact with each other (e.g. as in a cause an effect relationship).
It should be understood that embodiments of the present invention may be used in a variety of applications. Although the present invention is not limited in this respect, the devices disclosed herein may be used in many apparatuses such as in the transmitters and receivers of a radio system. Radio systems intended to be included within the scope of the present invention include, by way of example only, cellular radiotelephone communication systems, satellite communication systems, two-way radio communication systems, one-way pagers, two-way pagers, personal communication systems (PCS), personal digital assistants (PDA's), wireless local area networks (WLAN), personal area networks (PAN, and the like).
Types of cellular radiotelephone communication systems intended to be within the scope of the present invention include, although not limited to, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular radiotelephone communication systems, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular radiotelephone systems, North American Digital Cellular (NADC) cellular radiotelephone systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Extended-TDMA (E-TDMA) cellular radiotelephone systems, third generation (3G) systems like Wide-band CDMA (WCDMA), CDMA-2000, and the like.
One embodiment of the present invention may be a wireless mobile device that dynamically compiles a profile based on its usage in the context of the state of the external environment. The information gathered by this device may be multi-dimensional and may provide for the dynamic compilation of multi-dimensional profiles and dynamic pattern-matching with the changing state of the environment. Further, it may provide pro-active responses that may be based on these profiles. The device, upon receiving a trigger, may record information consisting of its own operational state (such as applications in use, etc.) and the state of external environment (such as time, location, proximity to other devices, descriptions of other devices and their states, etc.). The information may be used to build a profile depicting the relationships among the recorded data. Each time a new snapshot of environmental state is recorded, the profile may be dynamically updated. More than one profile may be maintained on a device.
In normal usage, the device may continually monitor the external environment and attempt to correlate it with the saved profiles. When a match is found, with a predetermined certainty, between the current state of the environment and a previously stored profile, the device may perform an action or a series of actions that would be most relevant given the environmental conditions. For example, a device may automatically launches an ‘e-wallet’ application in the vicinity of a particular bank since the device has ‘learned’ that the user may usually do it at that location. The device receives a confirmation for its predicted action when the user indeed makes use of the e-wallet application that was automatically launched.
To build the profile, generally, the user of the device may have full control on when and what kind of profile the device builds. If so enabled, a device may trigger a profile update whenever any application may be launched. Other possible trigger events may be change in time, proximity of an advertised service, proximity of another device, and many more. This list is but a fraction of the possible trigger events and the aforementioned enumeration is merely an illustrative list and should not be considered to limit the present invention. Again, in all cases, the user may choose which events are valid triggers. Some or all non-trigger events, even when detected, may be ignored by the device. Also, the user may choose to relinquish control of the trigger event. In that case, the device may record environmental information to the extent permitted by its resources (computing power, storage capability, etc.). Further, some other intermediate state, between full control and no control may be enabled depending on the needs and desire of the user.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the device may sense the state of its environment. This includes ability to communicate seamlessly and automatically with proximate devices and networks. The communication may occur wirelessly according to a wide variety of wireless communication methodologies know to those ordinary skill in the art and some of which are mentioned above, such as, by way of example only and not limitation, cellular radiotelephone communication systems, satellite communication systems, two-way radio communication systems, one-way pagers, two-way pagers, personal communication systems (PCS), personal digital assistants (PDA's), wireless local area networks (WLAN), personal area networks (PAN, and the like). Also, as mentioned above, wireless communication such as cellular radiotelephone communication systems are intended to be within the scope of the present invention.
The device also may determine its current location. This may be accomplished by using the Global Positioning System (GPS) or by communicating with other location aware devices or by communicating with other well-known fixed wireless services. Although it should be understood that the scope and application of the present invention is in no way limited to these examples. In another embodiment of the present invention there may be a ‘usage analysis engine’ that aggregates the snapshots of an environment to create or update the profile(s). The same engine may also predict actions when it ‘recognizes’ a pre-stored combination of environmental state variables. For example, and not meant to limit in any way the scope of the present invention, the engine may put the device into the same state that the user had put it in earlier (e.g. buzzer off inside Movie Theater) or open an application (e.g. e-wallet example above) that was open the last time the environmental variables matched. The engine may also note user's subsequent action(s) indicating whether the predicted action was desirable or not. This helps ‘train’ or fine tune the profile to develop responses that are helpful to user. The analysis engines may use a processor, such one that based on Intel® XScale architecture, to utilize heuristics and pattern matching algorithms to accomplish the aforementioned. However, it is understood that this analysis engine is but one type of analysis engine and one type of processor and it is anticipated that a wide variety of methodologies to analyze the present environment vis-a-vis previous environments may be employed and is anticipated by the present invention. Further, the present invention may be any combination or hardware and software.
The combination of external and internal state information may give the device a broader range of responses to a broader range of conditions, thus potentially increasing its perceived intelligence and value to the user.
Turning to
Portable communication device 105 may include a processor (not shown) that drives an analysis engine 110. The processor may be one of a variety of integrated circuits such as, for example, a microprocessor, a central processing unit (CPU), a digital signal processor, a microcontroller, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC), a complex instruction set computer (CISC), or the like, although the scope of the present invention is not limited by the particular design or functionality performed by processor.
Portable communication device 105 may also optionally include other components such as a display 107 and memory (e.g. RAM, non-volatile memory, or any of the other memory types described above). Memory may be used to store instructions to be executed by the integrated circuit and display 107 may present the results of the execution of those instructions to a user. Although it should be understood that the scope and application of the present invention is not limited to the above configuration of components.
An interface 109 may be used to provide communication or information between portable communication device 105 and a user. Alternatively or in addition, portable communication device may include other components such as input/output devices, audio outputs, etc. However it should be understood that the scope of the present invention is not limited so as to require any particular combination of components shown in
In order to facilitate wireless communication, portable communication device 105 may include a base band processor (not shown), such as one of the types described above and a transceiver (not shown) to provide access to other devices, service, networks, etc that may be used to allow portable communication device 50 to communicate with other networks through either a wired or wireless link. The transceiver may use antennas to wirelessly communicate. As stated above, although the scope of the present invention is not limited in this respect, communication transceiver 85 may employ a variety of wireless communication protocols such as cellular (e.g. Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular radiotelephone communication systems, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular radiotelephone systems, North American Digital Cellular (NADC) cellular radiotelephone systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Extended-TDMA (E-TDMA) cellular radiotelephone systems, third generation (3G) systems like Wide-band CDMA (WCDMA), CDMA-2000, and the like). In addition, portable communication device 50 may also include multiple transceivers that use different communication protocols.
In addition, the transceiver may use other protocols such as wireless local area network (WLAN), wide area network (WAN), or local area network (LAN) protocols such as the Industrial Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11, 802.16 and 802.18 standards, Bluetooth™, infrared, etc. (Bluetooth is a registered trademark of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group).
It should be understood that the scope of the present invention is not limited by the types of, the number of, or the frequency of the communication protocols that may be used by portable communication device 105. Furthermore, alternative embodiments may have more than two communication modules and communication modules need not have separate antennae, and some or all may share a common antenna. It should also be understood that the communication subsystem may include other optional components such as, for example, a vocoder to encode voice data, etc.
Returning to analysis engine 110, as briefly described above, there is included therein the ability to acquire and add data 115 on the current state of the environment and store it for subsequent comparisons. Storage may be provided by the memory and comparisons may be provided by algorithms executed by the processor, both described above. If a correlation exists 125, the portable communication device 105 may take some action or prohibit some action. If no correlation exists 130, the portable communication device may undertake no additional activities.
To illustrate the type of environments and the participants of such environments,
After the portable device 105 enters the dynamic wireless environment at 205, the portable device may create and store at 210 usage profiles of the environment as the environment surrounding the portable device 105 changes. At 215 the portable device 105 may compare the current usage profile with stored usage profiles. The usage profiles may contain actions that were taken or prevented in a previous usage profile. At 220 a correlation may occur between current and previous usage profiles. If it may be determined that a correlation may exist between a current and previous usage profile, because the portable device may predict usage, the portable device 105 at 225 may take some action or prohibit some action. In one embodiment of the present invention, the step 225 of taking some action or preventing some action may be overridden by the user of the portable device 105 (even the overriding of the action may become part of the usage profile for use subsequently).
At 230, if it appears there may be no correlation between the current and previous profile, the portable device 105 may not take any action or prevent any action.
While certain features of the invention have been illustrated and described herein, many modifications, substitutions, changes, and equivalents will now occur to those skilled in the art. It is, therefore, to be understood that the appended claims are intended to cover all such modifications and changes as fall within the true spirit of the invention.
