Patent Application
20130046592
Wireless communication services available for mobile vehicles, such as navigation and roadside assistance, have increased rapidly in recent years. Telematics services that are now available to consumers include navigation, infotainment, communication, maintenance and diagnostics, system updates, and emergency services, to name but a few. At the same time, the popularity of smartphones, netbooks, tablet computing devices, laptops and other portable electronics devices has also continued to grow. Accordingly, the popularity of mobile applications is also growing rapidly, as mobile phones and tablets now have the capabilities to provide consumers with increasingly sophisticated programs suitable for a broad range of tasks.
However, even with the rapid development of technology and the vast amount of information readily available over the Internet, car owners are still often unfamiliar with the basics of how to properly use and maintain their motor vehicles. Rather than take the time to read an owner's manual or look up features and solutions on the Internet, car owners often just barely get by with knowledge passed onto them by others regarding only the bare necessities, such as bringing the car in for an oil change and doing an occasional maintenance check-up. These car owners may be unaware of many features offered by modern vehicles, such as telematics services and special child safety seat locking mechanisms, as well as being unaware of conventional routine tasks such as how to check their oil or change a tire.
Thus, it is an object in part to provide a system and method for providing users of mobile computing devices with detailed information relating to their vehicles with an easy-to-use and engaging interface. However, while this is an object underlying certain implementations of the invention, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to systems that solve the problems noted herein. Moreover, the inventors have created the above body of information for the convenience of the reader and expressly disclaim all of the foregoing as prior art; the foregoing is a discussion of problems discovered and/or appreciated by the inventors, and is not an attempt to review or catalog the prior art.
The invention provides a system and method for quickly and intuitively provides users with a variety of detailed vehicle information through a mobile application on a mobile computing device. The mobile computing device is preferably a mobile phone having at least a camera, a display, a processor, and a tangible non-transient computer-readable medium for storing appropriate programming and vehicle information.
Using a camera, the mobile computing device receives at least one image corresponding to a vehicle, identifies at least one object in the at least one image, and displays the at least one image with overlaid information corresponding to any identified objects in the at least one image. The user may further provide the mobile computing device with an input corresponding to one of the identified objects (e.g. by tapping on an overlaid label on a touch screen display) and the mobile computing device further displays detailed vehicle information pertaining to the selected identified object.
The detailed vehicle information may be stored at the mobile computing device or may be received by the mobile computing device over a network. In further implementations, the detailed vehicle information may be based on the location of the user or the vehicle, may be based on the vehicle make, model or year, or may include advertisements (e.g. for particular brands of products).
The mobile computing device may further include at least one position sensor, such as a gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass, and use the position sensor to determine relative motion between images received at the mobile computing device. Using this relative motion, the mobile computing device may better adjust the display of overlaid information to correspond to user motion.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings.
Before discussing the details of the invention and the environment wherein the invention may be used, a brief overview is given to guide the reader. In general terms, not intended to limit the claims, the invention is directed to a mobile application on a mobile computing device that utilizes a camera to provide a user with detailed vehicle information regarding a vehicle based on where the camera is pointed. The mobile computing device presents the camera image to the user on a display, with an overlay labeling recognizable features of the vehicle. The user can select the labels (e.g. by touching them if it is a touchscreen display or through other input methods) and receive additional information regarding the selected label.
Given this overview, an exemplary environment in which the invention may operate is described hereinafter. It will be appreciated that the described environment is an example, and the components depicted do not necessarily imply any limitation regarding the use of other environments to practice the invention. With reference to
In a preferred implantation, the computing device 20 may be a mobile phone, but it will be appreciated that other types of computing environments may be employed and are contemplated by this invention, including but not limited to, tablet computers, personal computers, hand-held or laptop devices, programmable consumer electronics, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.
Although not required, aspects of the invention may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, being executed by a personal computer. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The depicted computing system environment in
The program modules stored on the ROM 24, RAM 25, or hard disk 32 may include an operating system 35, one or more applications programs 36, other program modules 37, and program data 38. It will be appreciated by those of skill in the art that the execution of the various machine-implemented processes and steps described herein may occur via the computerized execution of computer-executable instructions stored on a tangible computer-readable medium, e.g., RAM, ROM, PROM, volatile, nonvolatile, or other electronic memory mechanism.
A user may enter commands and information into the computing device 20 through input devices such as a touch-screen display 48 or other input devices such as a keyboard or pointing device (not depicted). Other input devices (also not depicted) may include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, or the like. These and other input devices may be connected to the processing unit 21 through an appropriate interface such as a universal serial bus (USB) or may be built into the computing device itself. In addition to the display 48, the computer may include other peripheral output devices such as speakers and printers (not depicted).
The computing device 20 may further include a network interface 53 and appropriate hardware for accessing local area networks, wireless networks, and the Internet, and for communicating with vehicle components, other devices, or a communications gateway using other wireless technologies such as shorter-range technologies including, but not limited to, WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and RFID. In a further implementation, the computing device 20 may utilize a vehicle's telecommunications module 114 and the computing device's connection with the vehicle components (which may be wired or wireless) to send and receive information over a wireless network.
The computing device 20 further includes a camera 41, capable of taking single images or continuous video (i.e. a sequence of images), as well as position sensor equipment 56, such as, for example, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses. Using the inputs from the position sensor equipment 56, the processing unit 21 and relevant program modules may determine the relative motion of the computing device 20 utilizing motion tracking technology known to those skilled in the art.
In a preferred embodiment, the computing device 20 is a mobile phone having a touch screen, a camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, appropriate programming and adequate processing power to execute the computer-implemented steps described herein. Various types of commercially available smartphones have these features or similar features and are capable of performing the processes described herein with appropriate programming. With further reference to the architecture of
In one implementation, the overlaid information may be based on a single image captured by the mobile phone's camera. In a further implementation, the camera may be feeding a video to the display of the mobile phone, and if the user moves the mobile phone, such as panning it or rotating it such that it views a different portion of the engine compartment, the mobile phone tracks the motion of the mobile phone 207 using the position sensors of the phone (e.g. gyroscope, accelerometer, compass or a combination thereof). This allows the mobile phone to move the overlaid information together with the motion of the background images, as well as presenting new overlay information if a new recognized object appears in the camera's field of view.
The user may further select an item of overlaid information 209, for example, by tapping the touch screen display of the mobile phone on one of the overlaid labels. Upon receiving this user input, the mobile phone may present further detailed vehicle information to the user. In one implementation, the further detailed vehicle information presented may be overlaid upon a background showing the mobile phone's field of view, similar to the presentation of the overlaid labels (this is depicted by
This described implementation may be better understood in the context of an example.
If the user taps on the washer fluid label 304 in
It will be appreciated that the objects depicted in
This detailed information may be stored at the mobile phone or may be stored at a remote location on a network and retrieved by the mobile phone over the network. Furthermore, it will be appreciated that the recognizable objects and detailed information may be vehicle-specific (i.e. different vehicles will have different features and designs) or location-specific (i.e. certain detailed information, such as a recommendation for tire type or oil type that should be used, may be based on the location of the vehicle or user). In different implementations of the present invention, the mobile applications may be particularly tailored to specific types of vehicles or may be generic and include the stored information off a variety of vehicles (or means for accessing such information). For a generic mobile application, the mobile application may require input from a user to specify a certain make, model, and/or year of vehicle that the camera is pointed at, or it may be programmed to be able to recognize certain types of vehicles. In yet another further implementation, a mobile application may be able to connect (via a connection port or wireless connection) to a vehicle telematics unit to obtain information regarding the vehicle (such as the vehicle type or other specific information such as diagnostic information and instrument panel readings).
Thus, it will be appreciated that the described system and method allows for mobile applications to quickly and intuitively provide users with a variety of detailed vehicle information. It will also be appreciated, however, that the foregoing methods and implementations are merely examples of the inventive principles, and that these illustrate only preferred techniques.
It is thus contemplated that other implementations of the invention may differ in detail from foregoing examples. As such, all references to the invention are intended to reference the particular example of the invention being discussed at that point in the description and are not intended to imply any limitation as to the scope of the invention more generally. All language of distinction and disparagement with respect to certain features is intended to indicate a lack of preference for those features, but not to exclude such from the scope of the invention entirely unless otherwise indicated.
The use of the terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar referents in the context of describing the invention (especially in the context of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The terms “comprising,” “having,” “including,” and “containing” are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning “including, but not limited to”) unless otherwise noted. Recitation of ranges of values herein are merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range, unless otherwise indicated herein, and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”) provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate the invention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the invention unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the invention.
Accordingly, this invention includes all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Moreover, any combination of the above-described elements in all possible variations thereof is encompassed by the invention unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.
