Patent Application
20110088809
Hand sanitizer dispensers are increasingly being placed in indoor facilities, such as retail store and supermarket entrances, business lobbies, airport gates and hospital service desks. Proprietors of such indoor facilities provide these hand sanitizer dispensers as a benefit to their customers to encourage cleanliness inside the facilities and reduce the spread of pathogens. However, to date, hand sanitizer dispensers have not been as prevalently offered in outdoor public locations, in part, due to the difficulty in controlling abusive use of the dispensers (e.g., excessive use, by passersby and non-customers, etc.) and the need to environmentally harden the dispensers. In particular, fuel pump dispensers at gas stations are an ideal environment to offer hand sanitizer dispensers. Due to heavy use, fuel pump handlers tend to be extremely dirty. What is needed as a fuel pump dispensers that includes a hand sanitizer dispenser.
One or more embodiments of the present invention provide a hand sanitizer device comprising a compartment embedded into a fuel pump dispenser and a hand sanitizer dispenser in the compartment space. In one embodiment, the hand sanitizer dispenser comprises an activation circuit for activating dispensing capabilities of the dispenser. The activation circuit is configured to receive an activation signal from a computer system coupled to the fuel pump dispenser and activate the hand sanitizer dispenser in response to the receipt of the activation signal. Similarly, the activation circuit is further is further configured to receive a deactivation signal from the computer system and deactivate the hand sanitizer dispenser in response to receipt of the deactivation signal. Alternatively, the hand sanitizer dispenser may further comprise a timer circuit for initiating a pre-determined time interval and deactivating the hand sanitizer dispenser upon an expiration of the time interval.
In response, in step 340, fuel pump dispenser transmits an activation message to the hand sanitizer dispenser of hand sanitizer compartment 150. In step 340, the hand sanitizer dispenser is activated (e.g., if automatic) and if it has a transparent pane, the transparent pane is unlocked, retracted or otherwise opened. In step 345, the patron reaches into hand sanitizer compartment opening 155 and is dispensed sanitizing product (e.g., either a portion of product or a sealed on unsealed moist towelette, depending upon the embodiment of the hand sanitizer dispenser). In an embodiment that dispenses sealed moist towelettes, a single moist towelette may be automatically dispensed from the dispenser and dropped into opening 155. In step 350, the patron removes his hand and, in step 355, hand sanitizer compartment 150 closes the transparent pane or deactivates the dispenser (e.g., if automatic). In one embodiment, the media system of fuel pump dispenser 100 transmits a deactivation signal to hand sanitizer compartment 150 after a predetermined (and configurable) time interval. In such an embodiment, the hand sanitizer dispenser of hand sanitizer compartment 150 includes an activation and deactivation circuit to receive such messages from fuel pump dispenser 100. In an alternative embodiment, the hand sanitizer dispenser includes its own timing circuit which deactivates the dispenser's automatic dispensing capabilities after a predetermined (and configurable) amount of time. In an alternative embodiment, hand sanitizer compartment 150 includes an infrared or other motion sensor that recognizes the removal of the patron's hands and deactivates and sensor and/or closes the transparent pane upon such removal.
It should be recognized that various modifications and changes may be made to the specific embodiments described herein without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. For example, rather than a having separate hand sanitizer compartment for each fuel pump dispenser at a fuel station, multiple fuel pump dispensers can share access to a standalone hand sanitizer compartment.
The various embodiments described herein may employ various computer-implemented operations involving data stored in computer systems. For example, these operations may require physical manipulation of physical quantities usually, though not necessarily, these quantities may take the form of electrical or magnetic signals where they, or representations of them, are capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, or otherwise manipulated. Further, such manipulations are often referred to in terms, such as producing, identifying, determining, or comparing. Any operations described herein that form part of one or more embodiments of the invention may be useful machine operations. In addition, one or more embodiments of the invention also relate to a device or an apparatus for performing these operations. The apparatus may be specially constructed for specific required purposes, or it may be a general purpose computer selectively activated or configured by a computer program stored in the computer. In particular, various general purpose machines may be used with computer programs written in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may be more convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the required operations.
The various embodiments described herein may be practiced with other computer system configurations including hand-held devices, microprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like.
One or more embodiments of the present invention may be implemented as one or more computer programs or as one or more computer program modules embodied in one or more computer readable media. The term computer readable medium refers to any data storage device that can store data which can thereafter be input to a computer system computer readable media may be based on any existing or subsequently developed technology for embodying computer programs in a manner that enables them to be read by a computer. Examples of a computer readable medium include a hard drive, network attached storage (NAS), read-only memory, random-access memory (e.g., a flash memory device), a CD (Compact Discs) CD-ROM, a CD-R, or a CD-RW, a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), a magnetic tape, and other optical and non-optical data storage devices. The computer readable medium can also be distributed over a network coupled computer system so that the computer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.
Although one or more embodiments of the present invention have been described in some detail for clarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes and modifications may be made within the scope of the claims. Accordingly, the described embodiments are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the scope of the claims is not to be limited to details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the claims. In the claims, elements and/or steps do not imply any particular order of operation, unless explicitly stated in the claims.
Plural instances may be provided for components, operations or structures described herein as a single instance. Finally, boundaries between various components, operations and data stores are somewhat arbitrary, and particular operations are illustrated in the context of specific illustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality are envisioned and may fall within the scope of the invention(s). In general, structures and functionality presented as separate components in exemplary configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or component. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single component may be implemented as separate components. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements may fall within the scope of the appended claims(s).
