Patent Application
20140297485
The present invention relates to mobile computing devices, such as smart phones. It further relates to applications on mobile devices that conveniently provide initial calibration of assets to-be-tracked. Enrollment of the asset into the application and associating initial and adjusted geospatial coordinates define various embodiments.
Locating systems are known for tracking assets. Computing devices determine existence, whereabouts and timing of items being transported or stored. Companies track items in static environments such as stores and warehouses, etc., for control of inventory. Companies also track items in dynamic environments involving complex positioning of cars, trucks, planes, etc. moving unconstrained around the globe. In any scheme, items are first enrolled in an asset management system.
Technicians identify assets to-be-tracked and note their initial position. If positioning is derived from “location aware” electronics, such as handheld GPS devices, accuracy is limited to a range of plus or minus approximately twenty-five feet (Global Positioning System (GPS) Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard, 4th Edition, September 2008, published by the United States Department of Defense). While such is sufficient for noting the whereabouts of relatively large objects, such as trucks, it is largely insufficient for finding/tracking small or miniature assets in rooms full of such assets. As items sometimes also travel vertically in space between floors of buildings or parking garages and/or to sides of doors or walls opposite their original positions, users often have difficulty finding both large and small assets despite their existence within the standards noted above. As electronic signals from GPS devices have difficulty negotiating past walls, concrete, steel, and the like, GPS accuracy tends to suffer indoors which further complicates tracking in building or city environments.
If positioning of assets is derived manually from technicians, such as by cross-referencing physical maps and floor plans, accuracy is further diminished. Warehouses and office floors often look similar in layout to other warehouses and office floors on campuses and technicians require proper orientation when not in familiar settings. There is also difficulty for technicians in actually obtaining maps in the first place. Not only do the maps not exist in some environments, but technicians need to learn how and where to obtain them. This wastes valuable time during enrollment.
In other art, some assets are known to “self enroll.” Technicians attach transponders to assets-of-interest and multiple point sources interrogate the transponder to automatically triangulate an initial location for the asset. These environments, however, require pre-positioned and calibrated communications infrastructure to already exist. It requires enormous expense and great complexity to implement. It is also an insufficient technique for tracking assets that move beyond the confines of the infrastructure.
What is needed is a simple enrollment technique that defines an asset's relative location within a tracking environment regardless of the infrastructure surrounding it. What is also needed is a system to more accurately establish an asset's whereabouts within a margin of tolerance tighter than existing art, especially in situations where assets move vertically in three-dimensional space. Additional benefits and alternatives are also sought when devising solutions.
The above-mentioned and other problems are solved by methods and apparatus for initially calibrating an asset to-be-tracked. In a representative embodiment, a mobile computing device hosts an operating system and mobile applications. A calibrating application causes display of an interface for entry of administrative data regarding an asset to-be-tracked. The data includes make, model, serial number, or the like. A positioning system defines locations of the asset in geospatial coordinates, such as latitude/longitude. The calibrating application displays a mapping function that shows on a map an initial location of the asset. Users adjust the initial location to a more accurate location on the map with a hand gesture on a display surface of the mobile computing device. A delta is noted between the two locations and is applied later during tracking of the asset to precisely establish its whereabouts. The delta is defined variously such as noting differences between original and later latitudes/longitudes, distance/theta measurements, etc. Software, executable code, interfaces, mobile applications, and computing system environments typify the embodiments.
Other embodiments note techniques for entry of administrative data of the asset. These include but are not limited to manual entry on an enrollment page of the calibrating application, scanning bar codes of the asset, reading RFID tags of the asset, transmitting/receiving data with near field communication modules of the asset and the mobile computing device, and mobile capture (with optical character recognition) of data from a nameplate of the asset.
These and other embodiments are set forth in the description below. Their advantages and features will become readily apparent to skilled artisans. The claims set forth particular limitations.
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings where like numerals represent like details. The embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and that changes may be made without departing from the scope of the invention. The following detailed description, therefore, is not to be taken in a limiting sense and the scope of the invention is defined only by the appended claims and their equivalents. In accordance with the features of the invention, methods and apparatus are described for initial calibration of assets in locating systems.
With reference to
Upon successful receipt of the calibrating application 14, the mobile computing device 16 hosts it on one or more controllers 20 resident in a housing 28. The controller(s) also host an operating system (O.S.) and one or more additional mobile applications, as is typical. One or more transceiver(s) 30 reside in the housing 28 to communicate information from the calibrating application 14 to another device 40 external to the housing 28. The other device is any of a variety but is commonly another mobile computing device, transmission tower, base station, computer, router, communications terminal, etc. Under a variety of situations, the transceiver sends and receives signals to the device via communication techniques such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (wireless local area network), near field communication (NFC), etc.
A positioning system 60 also resides in the mobile computing device 16 and communicates with the calibrating application 14. It is integrated in smart phones to establish a whereabouts of the housing of the phone at all times. It may be also used to establish a whereabouts of a destination or other designated position that is not necessarily the location of the phone at that time. The position may be displayed on a map from a mapping function 65 that also communicates with the calibrating application. The unit of measurement from the positioning system is any of a variety recognizable by the calibrating application but coordinates from a GPS (global positioning satellite) module are typical. These include but are not limited to absolute locations such as latitude/longitude and altitude coordinates about the world, relative locations noted by “pin drops” or other designators such as flags, stars, etc. placed on maps from the mapping function 65, or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates noted relative to a mapping feature in one or more map zones.
At other elements 70, the calibrating application 14 leverages still other functionality of smart phones. This includes but is not limited to functions found in address books, lists of contacts, calendars, clocks, cameras, photos, notifications, messages, compasses, etc. Slot 31 may provide access to further functions or data by way of an inserted card or wired interface to another computing device.
With reference to
To do so, the operator of the mobile device brings up the “registration enrollment” page 71 of the calibrating application. Once there, they cause entry of the administrative data of the asset into the page. The following are representative ways in which this can be accomplished. One, the technician enters the data manually into fields 61 of the page 71 using a keyboard (not shown) of the mobile computing device. Two, the technician uses the mobile computing device to scan a barcode 260 of the asset. The barcode is decoded into the characters of the administrative data and automatically populated into the fields of the application. Three, the technician uses the smart phone to take a picture of the nameplate 240 and an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) routine recognizes the characters in the administrative data. The calibrating application automatically enters the recognized characters into requisite fields of the application. The picture, or “mobile capture,” originates from a camera feature of the phone while the OCR routine can be embedded as part of the calibrating application. Four, the technician obtains administrative data from the asset by radio frequency means 270 such as used with NFC (Near Field Communication) transmitters/receivers or an RFID tag 250. Either or both of these can be decoded by the transceiver 30 of the smart phone (
Once obtained, the technician advances 100 the registration enrollment page to page 73 noting the “initial location” of the asset 200. To illustrate the concept, skilled artisans will recognize that the asset to-be-tracked is any of a variety that can travel in a variety of locations. However, a pump is described herein for use in a hospital environment 210. The pump is located on a second floor 212 of the hospital. An X-Y-Z coordinate system illustrates the three-dimensional planes of the hospital and the pump. The X-Y plane denotes a coordinate plane where a positioning system 60 (
With reference to
With reference to
As there now exists a difference in location between the initial location of the asset obtained during its coarse calibration and its proper location obtained from the technician during adjustment, the calibrating application and/or asset management system calculates an error (delta) 340 between the two as shown in
With reference to
Relative advantages of the many embodiments should now be apparent to skilled artisans. They include but are not limited to: (1) providing a real time locating system to precisely establish a whereabouts of an asset to-be-tracked; (2) providing a simple technique for adjusting an initial, coarse estimate to a more accurate and proper location of an asset that later undergoes tracking; and (3) associating a relative location of an asset in a floor plan of a building, for example, to its absolute geospatial coordinates with a high degree of precision to provide a better, global view of assets under management in a tracking environment.
The foregoing illustrates various aspects of the invention. It is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it is chosen to provide the best illustration of the principles of the invention and its practical application to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the invention. All modifications and variations are contemplated within the scope of the invention as determined by the appended claims. Relatively apparent modifications include combining one or more features of various embodiments with features of other embodiments.
