According to 2004 National Statistics Report released by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis of US Department of Transportation [1], the total number of the police-reported vehicle damages in 2004 was 4,281,000, most of which happened in the parking space. It was also estimated that the number of the total non-police-reported vehicle damages could even be higher [2].
When a vehicle is in operation on the road, people normally have conscious attention to exercise a full control of the vehicle to stay away from a potential damage. That is why most of the road damages come from unconscious drivers such as DWI. However, when a vehicle is parked in a parking space and is away from the attention of the host, there is no way to avoid any malicious or accidental damages. This fact explains that most of the damages come from the parking space where the damaged vehicles are not in operation on the road.
Motivated by this consideration, we invent an automatic surveillance method as well as the related apparatus that prevents and records any potential damages to a vehicle in a parking space without the attention of the host of the vehicle for the vehicle safety concern. The method and the apparatus consist of a surveillance device and software. The surveillance device consists of three synchronized components: a sensor component, a processing component, and a communication component.
When a vehicle is parked in a place (which may be but not necessarily limited to a public parking space, on the street, in front of a building including a private house), the sensor component of the surveillance device monitors the surrounding environment of the vehicle all the time including day and night for the vehicle safety concern. The sensor component is a combination of several types of sensors including video camera, infrared camera, motion detection sensors, etc.
Whenever the sensor component is in operation, the processing component also works in synchronization with the sensor component. There are three functionalities for the processing component. The first functionality is to intelligently and automatically schedule the switch between different types of the sensors at different times (e.g., the sensors used in the daytime are different from those used in the night). The second functionality is to provide the online processing of the sensor data to detect any potentially committed compromise to the vehicle safety (the detailed detection algorithm is filed separately as another invention). The synchronized operation between the sensor component and the processing component ensures the detection of any type of the potentially committed compromise to the vehicle safety. The third functionality is to provide indexing to the recorded video to allow fast browsing. In case the method fails to detect a compromise to the vehicle safety, the host can browse the recorded video and find out what has happened. Linearly browsing the video is extremely time-consuming. Our method creates indexing based on the analysis of the sensor signals. This allows nonlinear browsing which is much more efficient.
When there is an actually committed compromise to the vehicle safety (e.g., a collision from other vehicles to this vehicle or a manual scratch by a human being to this vehicle), the processing component of the surveillance device shall immediately detect such committed compromise and shall record and document the whole visual process of such committed compromise. In addition, at the first moment when such committed compromise is initiated, the synchronized communication component of the surveillance device shall immediately send an alert message to one or all of the hosts of the vehicle depending on how the alert sending pattern is set. The communication of this alert message is sent through a wireless channel from the surveillance device installed in the vehicle to a reception device of the hosts. The reception device of the hosts may be but not necessarily limited to cell phone, or personal computer. Once the hosts receive the alert message, they may request the surveillance device through the communication component to view the scene online recorded and documented by the processing component of the surveillance device on the spot. This functionality of online viewing helps the hosts determine whether this specific alert is for a real committed compromise to the vehicle safety or just a false alarm. If it is a real committed compromise to the vehicle safety, this functionality of online viewing further helps the hosts decide whether this committed compromise to the vehicle safety actually results in damage to the vehicle, and if this is the case, how serious the damage is. This information is helpful in the hosts' further decision-making regarding whether to take further actions including legal actions, such as but not necessarily limited to reporting the accident to the police and/or saving the online scene transmitted over from the communication component of the surveillance device. The saved footages can be used as legal evidence for subsequent legal actions.
[1] Traffic Safety Fact 2004, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, US Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.,
[2] http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/