Patent Application
20160353519
The present invention relates generally to the fields of computer technology, power distribution technology supply and regulation, transaction point-of presence devices in retail and other commercial and consumption activities, networks, communication technology.
The mobile landscape is exploding. Not just phones but tablets and other devices are creating an environment where individuals can access an ever growing set of services digitally via numerous channels available through these devices. As the utilization of mobile devices grow and the intelligence and communications available within these devices grows these factors provide even greater opportunity for individuals to take advantage of services available through those mobile devices. With this growth in capability, the ability to reliably transact with the device becomes critical to the successful delivery of those services. In many instances the mobile device replaces a different mechanism that is used to identify the bearer as authorized to perform a specific type of interaction that enables that individual to gain access to or acquirer a particular commodity or service.
The context of this is twofold, supporting both the identification and verification of the service recipient as well as the delivery of the specific credentials which, by verification and authorization of the credential, enable the interaction to conclude. Consumers shall have credentials stored within their mobile device and available through remote stores either previously obtained or obtained in a near real-time manner. Identification and verification of said consumer as qualified to obtain or receive delivery of prequalified credential for said service, may be handled locally if appropriate application qualified entry and validation mechanisms are integrated with the mobile device. Equally acceptable is utilization of a remote interaction model which based upon the value and risk of the credential acquisition, a variety of methods may be employed by the service provider to ensure that an appropriate strength of verification is applied. These actions require power to be available within the mobile device to activate and process the underlying service as well as, in the case of a remote interaction; one example being a cloud based implementation; employing communications with a remote entity, power additionally being available to drive said communications.
The second aspect of the interaction is the delivery of the information to the accepting device, in this context an interaction is an information exchange between a mobile device and another electronic device or individual in which the mobile device conveys information identifying the holder of the device as being specifically qualified to receive goods or services based upon delivering said information through the mobile device and any verification and/or approvals that may be required by the receiving entity. Again power is required within the mobile device to exchange that information.
Examples of such interactions include but are not limited to:
In all of these cases at the point of transaction/interaction; for theater it could be at the entry door, at a store it could be the register counter; a presentation of the appropriate credential is required complete the transaction. If a mobile device is used to deliver that credential then a lack of power available in the device will not allow the transaction to complete, impacting the mobile device holder and the service provider.
Mobile devices being portable they typically derive the energy for their operation from a portable power source i.e. battery. During normal use there exists the possibility that a battery could be drained rendering the device temporarily inoperable. At that time an individual will not be able to complete acquisition of a specific service given this lack of power available to operate the mobile device. This system and methods addresses this deficiency by providing the mobile device with a locally available power source at the point-of-presence where the interchange occurs enabling the individual to qualify for the acquisition of the desired product or service.
Typically power can be supplied to a device via one of three approaches
Battery replacement is not practical from either an economic or logistics perspective. There are too many different form factors for these batteries and to have a supply of all possible packages at every point of presence would be unwieldy. Additionally, the different physical form factors and power profiles require a variety of different adapters to keep the batteries charged. Furthermore, certain form factors, some tablets as an example, have sealed enclosures requiring professional service personnel to disassemble and replace. For all of these reasons option one is not feasible.
However the other two options are at the core of this invention. As the mobile device sector has matured there has been more and more standardization of the interface connectors. At this time the mini USB style predominates. That of course is outside of the Apple product line which utilizes their proprietary pin out and connector design. Additionally devices come with multiple RF communications protocols built into the devices some of which support power delivery through electromagnetic induction. Another form of power charging available today utilizes induction pads which introduces a plug-in housing which is connected to the mobile device's charging port and when the device is placed upon an induction mat; power is transmitted through the adapter to recharge the mobile device.
This invention utilizes these technologies and applies them to provide both integrated and stand beside solutions enabling a mobile device to deliver the appropriate credentials even if the situation involves the case that the mobile device has inadequate available internal power.
The present invention discloses systems and methods utilizing electronic circuitry, power delivery, computer programs and communications channels for the purpose of providing temporary power to enable an individual with a mobile device to utilize the device to provide appropriate identity, credentials, tokens, tickets or reservation data enabling them to complete a transaction and/or authenticate their rights to receive or access specific items, locations and/or services when the internal power source of the mobile device is deficient.
Starting with the proliferation of “smart” phones and the widespread use of tablets, in many cases the later replacing traditional PCs for personal use, many commercial and industrial sectors are taking advantage of both the computing power and portability of these platforms. It is common to see the mobile device being used as both a conduit and repository for credentials that are used to identify the holder as qualified for some product or service. The range of credential use is very broad. It can be as simple as a generic coupon which indicates that any holder of the offer obtains some kind of discount on the commodity associated with the offer. It can be a directed offer tailored for an individual or specific group and only those individuals qualified can make use of the offer. It can represent a prior purchase qualifying the holder access to specific services or goods. Theater tickets, ticket to sporting events, concerts, season passes with many related services, . . . are examples of these types of products. These could also be airline tickets, hotel reservations, dinner reservations or facilities access. It can also be payment credentials which are used at points of presence to indicate that the holder agrees to pay the merchant for the goods or services being exchanged and that the holder is authorizing the institution that granted the credential the authority to move those funds from the account associated with the credential to the account of the merchant.
The data representing these credentials may be stored locally on the mobile device or in remote servers, however the mobile device is used at the point-of-presence to identify the holder and initiate or deliver the credentials to recipient. In today's vernacular a cloud service is one example of a representation of said remote server environment. Storing credentials on a Secure Element resident within the mobile device is an example of locally stored credentials. This type of data store is required for only the most sensitive of credentials.
At point-of-presence the credential could be displayed and/or delivered via a data communications channel to a merchant device to convey the credential information. A visual display is either presented to merchant representative who can either:
If the exchange utilizes a data channel from the mobile device then the device must have the appropriate applications and active communications protocols engaged to interact with an intelligent device at the point-of-presence, to complete the exchange.
In all of the instances if the mobile device does not have power than the exchange cannot occur. Thus inhibiting the ability of the mobile device owner from receiving the goods or services desired and creating a situation in which the commerce associated with the interaction cannot be completed or a horrible experience in that products previously purchased, e.g. theater tickets cannot be used even though the consumer has properly purchased a right of entry.
At the core of this system and methods are solutions that provide power at points-of-presence, for a vast majority of mobile devices, enabling them to complete these transactions. Furthermore this system has the ability to protect the holder of the charging environment from abuse. These methods provide power to enable a device to complete a transaction ensuring successful commerce and service delivery; however it is not the intent of this solution to create a recharging station capable of filling the devices battery storage. In certain environments replenishment of the devices battery power stores would entail a significant additional expense for the merchant and therefore one option enumerated in the methods of the present invention is the ability to restrict said feature, limiting power delivery to a reasonable timeframe to complete a transaction.
To frame the discussion this description shall focus on Point of Sale, POS systems. The system and methods described here can be implemented in any other electronic device utilized to capture and qualify the rights associated with a credential as described above. An engineer knowledgeable in the art shall be able to create the same power delivery and control mechanisms for form factors in addition to the POS system described here. The set of devices may include but are not limited to:
With the advent of payment credentials hosted on portable devices there is a need to ensure that a consumer can complete their transaction even if their portable device is short on power. The battery in the device could be low or depleted of charge adequate to power the device. This invention introduces a power delivery mechanism within the POS system by which a wide range of portable devices shall be supported and by which the POS system shall deliver the power necessary to activate the device and complete the transaction. This is not intended to be a recharge station, but as a temporary power source utilized by a merchant to enable powering a device holding a payment credential or access to a payment credential.
This system supports two approaches by which power can be delivered to a mobile device.
1. Physical connection
2. Induction
The system and methods described here utilize these two technologies, wired and inductive power distribution to provide the temporary power source needed to deliver the power necessary to activate a mobile device and the required programs to manage that power distribution.
The solution requires a power source. This power source shall be either wired AC power through a connection to a facility's physical plant through a point-of presence accepting device or through a stand-beside unit configured to provide this temporary power source or from power derived from another mobile device, e.g. a battery in a handheld POS terminal provided tableside in a restaurant.
In the event that the implementation is a connected implementation; physical connection with wires, the power leads shall be exposed from the source device. The wires shall be terminated in an appropriate base connector. Based upon the state of the art in the industry today this connector could be of a male Mini-USB form factor 5. Only those connector pins associated with power delivery need be enabled. To support the possibility that not all mobile devices accept this primary connector interface a select set of Alternate Connectors 6 shall be provided. Following the example described above, these pass-through adapters shall on one side utilize a female mini-USB connector and on the other have the appropriate connector for the device class being supported. For example Apple has both a 30 pin and an 8 pin connector depending upon the generation of the device class. Two adapters would be required to support all generations of Apple phone devices. In the attached figures the Mini USB—Apple connector adapter 6 configurations are used to represent the broad spectrum of possible alternative adapters and is not expressly limited to the Apple alternatives. The use of the ( . . . ) in the drawings is representative of that abstraction.
Since handling multiple connectors are always challenging and the likelihood of lost connectors high the intent is that the connectors shall be packaged as a composite component. Implementation shall be either:
In the event that the system is implemented in an integrated manner, for example as an extension of an existing transaction acceptance, device circuitry shall be included to ensure that a device requiring excessive load cannot adversely impact the primary system. For example in the event that power is attempted to be introduced into the system or if the load would draw so much power through the system as to damage the internal electronics of that device, circuitry shall be in place to prevent such occurrences. In these schematics the Load Regulator 3 would handle that process.
The purpose of this solution is to provide power to a mobile device for a short period of time to enable the device to participate in some form of interaction. The intent is not to create a charging station for mobile devices. To that end an optional method of this system is to include circuitry to limit the power cycle. The basic circuitry shall be implemented to sense when a device connects to the power distribution cable or is placed in the RF induction field. At that point a timer shall be activated that shall, after a defined period of time, terminate power delivery. The packaging of the sensors and the circuit controlling timing is represented by the Timing Mechanism 4 in the included figures. The determination of the cutoff point shall be achievable via three possible mechanisms depending upon the particular form of the power distribution device. The alternatives are:
As this is an optional feature it is also possible to deliver a device that does not include any such limiting capability. In that scenario there would be nothing preventing the power distribution system to be used to recharge the batteries of a mobile device.
In the event that the solution utilizes induction rather than a hardwired connection, the electrical requirements differ.
The power source alternatives are the same as described above in the connected output alternative.
The power delivery is through a radiation field generated by an Antenna 13. That requires that the power always be applied to the antenna so when a device enters the field the power is available for consumption. Having the power always on, is a straight forward but suboptimal design. This is one implementation option; however an improved alternative would be to incorporate a sensor as part of the Antenna 13 assembly which would identify when a device has entered the field. Upon entry the power level would be increased to provide sufficient radiation to induce appropriate power transmission. For example the sensor could utilize RF, optical or pressure technology to identify the entry of a device into the radiation field of the antenna. The solution does not limit the type of sensor technology. The solution recommends that a sensor be present for optimal performance, however does not require one.
To create the required RF Electromagnetic field oscillating energy is required. Where in the connected solution a DC current output is required, here an alternating current is required. In addition the incremental circuitry shall incorporate an RF modulation module one example of one is a crystal 11 and RF amplifier 12 feeding into a load regulator 3 , which delivers the RF energy to an antenna assembly 13. The crystal is one representation of an energy generating oscillating element. A tuned coil is another. In a tuned coil representation AC current would drive the operation. Further either the sensor within the Load regulator module 3 and the timer circuitry 4 shall be included in the solution that limits power delivery duration. Finally in the event that the induction solution requires sets of connectors for the device a similar approach would be taken to that described above for the wired connections. In that scenario the primary connector would be the Mobile RF Adapter 14 which in this example based upon the state of the industry today would have a USB-M connector for interconnection with the mobile device. The same set of alternate adapters 6 shall be tethered together with the Mobile RF adapter to create the connector set supporting device diversity. This mirror's the design concepts of a power pad utilized as a recharging station and would be required in the event that the mobile device does not have the required NFC or NFC equivalent technology in place to accept the RF power source.
In this instantiation of the solution the RF connector module depicted in
A further alternative in the methods introduces a design which combines the RF and wired solution. A likely scenario would for example an existing retail point of sale device which incorporates NFC technology; with the possible requirement that it need to increase the RF output to provide sufficient energy to create the appropriate charger to power the receiving device. If the customer holds a device that is not NFC capable then they would revert to the wired approach to provide device power and display or deliver the necessary information after device activation.
This power distribution assembly whether wired or using induction can be integrated with an existing servicing system or be packaged as a separate module and operate in a stand beside mode. There are three alternatives defined for this integration. For clarity in this discussion a retail POS terminal is being used as an example of an accepting device. The integration alternatives work for any other accepting device, including but not limited to, ticketing, ticket accepting, reservation processing, access, purchasing, . . . , devices.
