In the world of logistics, there is a desire to track the location and monitor the health of portable assets including, for example, shipping containers, cargo containers, and portable storage containers along with their contents. Existing asset tracking systems are generally limited to location tracking and lack health monitoring capabilities and/or team, fleet, and customer management capabilities that are desirable in a wholistic approach to asset tracking and management. Further, the asset-location functionality of existing systems is generally provided via GPS sensing only, which is vulnerable to periodic signal losses and location granularity issues as the asset moves about the world. Existing systems exhibit additional challenges with power/battery performance, customized configurability, and cost.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key aspects or essential aspects of the claimed subject matter. Moreover, this Summary is not intended for use as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.
One embodiment provides a system for tracking a location and monitoring a health of a portable asset. The system may include: (1) a tracking and monitoring unit affixed to the portable asset, the tracking and monitoring unit comprising an enclosure housing a microcontroller communicatively coupled with a plurality of state sensors, an interrogation tag, and a multi-mode communication system including a plurality of communication transceivers, the microcontroller configured for collecting raw data from the multi-mode communication system and the plurality of the state sensors, the raw data representing a location of the tracking and monitoring unit and a health of the portable asset; (2) an asset tracking and health monitoring analysis platform in communication with the tracking and monitoring unit, the asset tracking and health monitoring analysis platform configured for receiving the raw data from the tracking and monitoring unit and executing a tracking, monitoring, and management module for analyzing the raw data according to a plurality of user-defined conditions to determine one or more corresponding outcomes; and (3) an application-linking platform in communication with the asset tracking and health monitoring analysis platform and a plurality of user devices, the application-linking platform implementing a tracking and monitoring application for: (a) receiving, via one or more interactive screens presented on the plurality of the user devices, the user-defined conditions; and (b) providing, via the one or more of the interactive screens, the corresponding outcomes.
Other embodiments are also disclosed.
Additional objects, advantages and novel features of the technology will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will become more apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following, or may be learned from practice of the technology.
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Non-limiting and non-exhaustive embodiments of the present invention, including the preferred embodiment, are described with reference to the following figures, wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the various views unless otherwise specified. Illustrative embodiments of the invention are illustrated in the drawings, in which:
Embodiments are described more fully below in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the system and method. However, embodiments may be implemented in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein. The following detailed description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense.
The technology discussed herein relates to location tracking and health monitoring of portable assets, including, for example, portable storage containers, shipping containers, and cargo containers, along with their contents. Embodiments of the disclosed asset tracking, monitoring, and management system and associated use methods additionally provide asset team, fleet, and customer management solutions.
In this regard, the disclosed system and methods track an asset's location with a high level of redundancy including via GPS/Glonass, via WiFi access-point sniffing, and via cell tower triangulation to ensure consistent asset tracking despite signal fluctuations experienced through any particular medium. In addition to location tracking functionality, embodiments of the disclosed system and methods provide health monitoring relating to a variety of asset health conditions including temperature and humidity of or within the asset, shock, tilt, and detected motion within (e.g., entry or access to) the asset.
Generally, when elements discussed herein are referred to as being “connected” or “coupled,” the elements can be directly connected or coupled together or one or more intervening elements may also be present. In contrast, when elements are referred to as being “directly connected” or “directly coupled,” there are no intervening elements present.
The subject matter may be embodied as devices, systems, methods, and/or computer program products or modules. Accordingly, some or all of the subject matter may be embodied in hardware and/or in software or in a combination thereof (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, state machines, gate arrays, etc.). As used herein, a software component may include any type of computer instruction or computer executable code located within or on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium/memory. A software component may, for instance, comprise one or more physical or logical blocks of computer instructions, which may be organized as a routine, program, object, component, data structure, etc., that performs one or more tasks or implements particular data types.
Furthermore, the subject matter may take the form of a computer program product or module on a computer-usable or computer-readable storage medium/memory having computer-usable or computer-readable program code embodied in the medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system. In the context of this document, a computer-usable or computer-readable storage medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, device, or propagation medium. By way of example, computer readable media may comprise computer storage media and communication media.
Computer storage media/memory includes volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data. Computer storage media includes any medium that can be used to store the desired information and that can be accessed by an instruction execution system.
Communication media typically embodies computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media/network channel. By way of example, and not limitation, the term communication media, channel, or network includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as satellite, wireless networking technologies (e.g., WAN, WiFi, WLAN, WiMAX, NB-IoT, cellular), acoustic, RF, infrared, Bluetooth, and/or other wireless media. Combinations of the any of the above should also be included within the scope of communication media and/or channels.
When the subject matter is embodied in the general context of computer-executable instructions, the embodiment may comprise program modules or tools, executed by one or more systems, computers, processors, or other devices. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks/functions or implement particular data types. Typically, the functionality of the program modules may be combined or distributed as desired in various embodiments. Software implementations may include one or more computer programs comprising executable code/instructions that, when executed by a processor, may cause the processor to perform a method defined at least in part by the executable instructions. The computer program/module can be written in any form of programming language, including complied or interpreted languages, and can be deployed in any form, including as a standalone program or as a module, component, subroutine, or other unit suitable for use in a computing environment.
As discussed above, the present systems and methods generally relate to portable asset location tracking, asset health monitoring, and team, fleet, and customer management. Turning to the figures,
Returning to
In this embodiment, the analysis platform 115 may transmit or publish the data analysis results, and the raw data itself if desired and/or necessary, to an application-linking platform 125, also maintained on the AWS cloud, which receives the data and the analysis results and executes a set of algorithms of an application-linking module 130 to control system linkage with a tracking and monitoring application (e.g., a web application, iOS application, Android application) running on one or more user/customer devices 135, which may be administrative user devices or individual customer user devices and may be any network-enabled computer such as, for example, a smartphone, laptop computer, desktop computer, and the like.
The tracking and monitoring application 140 running on the user device may provide a plurality preconfigured and interactive graphical user interface (GUI) screens that enable communication through the cloud-platform chain to/from the tracking and monitoring unit for a variety of tracking, monitoring, and management purposes including, for example, access to and control of the defined customer conditions (e.g., sensor settings, communication settings, outcome thresholds and/or triggers, reporting settings, alert settings, notification settings, defining customer teams, defining assets in a fleet, etc.), the raw data, the analysis results, as well as interactive access to actual reports, alerts, triggered actions, and/or for interrogating or querying the tracking and monitoring unit directly, as further detailed below.
The functionality and components of the analysis platform 115 and the application-linking platform 125 may be separate, as described above, or may be combined in a single computing platform or distributed across a plurality of computing platforms as desired and/or appropriate in various embodiments. The distribution of processing, storage, software instructions, scripts, algorithms, and user interfaces may be distributed in any appropriate manner across any number of computing platforms that are similarly or disparately geographically situated.
To further detail the primary system components described generally above,
The tracking and monitoring unit 110 may also incorporate a plurality of state sensors 190 including, for example, one or more temperature sensors 195, humidity sensors 200, shock/vibration accelerometers 205, tilt sensors 210, and infrared motion detectors 215 that operate to monitor a heath of the asset and its contents in terms of heat (e.g., too hot, too cold), humidity (e.g., too high, too low), acceptable/unacceptable shock, vibration, and/or tilt levels, and motion detected within the asset (e.g., rodents, human access in/out of the asset container). The multi-mode communication system and the state sensors may collect raw data from within the asset at defined intervals for subsequent analysis and then reporting, alert, notification and/or for triggering other responsive outcomes, events, or actions according to the customer's defined conditions.
The tracking and monitoring unit 110 may be battery powered via any appropriate number and/or type of batteries 220. In one embodiment, the unit 110 may be powered by 4 AA batteries with a 20-year shelf-life and a 2-year operational life. Operational life may vary depending on the sensor and communication settings or conditions (e.g., 1 GPS reading per day, etc.) defined by the customer. The system may provide alerts via the tracking and monitoring application(s), detailed below, to warn at predetermined battery life thresholds.
In this embodiment, the tracking and monitoring unit 110 may also incorporate a physical interrogation tag 225 such as, for example, a QR code, bar code, or the like. The interrogation tag 225 is accessible to the customer or other user via the tracking and monitoring application running on the customer or user device, and the customer may employ the tracking and monitoring application and the user device (e.g., camera, QR code reader) to interrogate the interrogation tag 225 to identify, set-up, other otherwise directly communicate with, query, and/or control the tracking and monitoring unit 110.
Turning to the analysis platform,
As shown in
The database management module 245 (
The rule module 250 (
The conditions and outcomes module 260 (
Conditions and outcomes may also be defined for the health of the tracking and monitoring unit 110 (
In sum, the conditions and outcomes module 260 (
Turning to the application-linking platform 125 (
A browser or application window at any of the user devices may be configured to display text content, image content, input features, navigable links, etc. of the preconfigured screens of the GUI. Each preconfigured screen may include any appropriate type of content in various combinations, and the screen(s) displayed to the users may be specific to the viewing platform. For example, screen(s) presented at the administrative user device may differ from the screen(s) shown at a first set of customer user devices for an assigned team or fleet, which may differ from the screens shown another set of customer user devices for another assigned team or fleet, depending on a variety of factors including, for example, the type of information to be collected and/or transmitted, security concerns, user permissions, defined conditions and outcomes, and so on.
GUI screen content may be interspersed or combined in any suitable fashion according to the capabilities of the browser and/or language used to implement the GUI, and may be displayed in any suitable area of the browser or application window. In some embodiments, the window may be generated and managed by a web browser such as, for example, MICROSOFT EXPLORER®, FIREFOX®, SAFARI®, CHROME®, etc., implemented from the appropriate system component.
In various embodiments, the modules shown in
Embodiments of the asset tracking, monitoring, and management system discussed above enable a variety of asset tracking methods, asset health monitoring methods, and team, fleet, customer management methods that allow customers to install tracking and monitoring units into one or more assets, add the tracking and monitoring units to a fleet, link users together as a customer team, track the location of the asset or fleet of assets in a variety of customized ways (e.g., mapping, geofencing, duration-at-location reporting, real-time movement tracking), monitor a health of the asset or assets in relation to temperature, humidity, tilt, vibration, shock, motion within the asset, and battery life of the tracking and monitoring units, and manage the team of users, associated fleet of assets, and individual customers using the system.
Embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed herein enable multi-mode or medium location tracking of assets with a higher level of redundancy than existing systems, which generally fail with signal losses. The system also allows a high degree of customization, via the tracking and monitoring unit firmware and the tracking and monitoring application, and enables customized thresholds and triggers for outcomes such as alerts, reporting, and action. This customizability exists across at least ten supported functionalities of the system: cellular, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, temperature sensing, humidity sensing, shock sensing, tilt sensing, motion sensing, and FOTA over-air firmware updates. With NB-IOT and Cat1M 4G LTE network connectivity, assets equipped with the tracking and monitoring unit may roam anywhere in the world for maximum reach in asset tracking, health monitoring, and fleet management.
Although the above embodiments have been described in language that is specific to certain structures, elements, compositions, and methodological steps, it is to be understood that the technology defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific structures, elements, compositions and/or steps described. Rather, the specific aspects and steps are described as forms of implementing the claimed technology. Since many embodiments of the technology can be practiced without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, the invention resides in the claims hereinafter appended.
Reference To Pending Prior Patent Application This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119 (e) of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/159,751, filed Mar. 11, 2021 by Garrod W. Massey, et al., for “ASSET TRACKING, MONITORING, AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHODS OF USE” which patent application is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63159751 | Mar 2021 | US |