Patent Application
20070171040
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to vehicle locator beacon, and more particularly to an vehicle locator beacon that can be mounted on appropriate positions of an automobile to project an obvious light spot or pattern near a place where the automobile parks to facilitate the driver to find out the automobile.
2. Description of the Related Art
Automobiles are very common transportation nowadays. Due to the increasing numbers of automobiles everywhere, more and more underground parking areas and parking towers are constructed. In order to provide sufficient parking spaces, one layer of parking lot usually can afford numerous automobiles to park.
However, this situation causes inconvenience to drivers when they return to the parking lot to find out the automobiles. Especially when the light in the parking lot is dim or the drivers are not familiar to the environment of the parking lot, the drivers usually spend much time on looking for their automobiles.
In view of this inconvenient situation, a conventional method to solve this problem is that the drivers use remote control locks to start the automobiles, so that the automobiles can make beep sound to guide the drivers to find out their automobiles. However, a drawback of the conventional method is that the beep sound may have an echo around the parking lot, so as to cause noise and mislead the drivers to wrong locations of the automobiles.
An objective of the present invention is to provide a vehicle locator beacon to facilitate drivers to find out their automobiles very quickly in a parking lot. A preferred embodiment of the vehicle locator beacon of the present invention includes a base forming a cavity, a control module and a light transmitter. The control module is mounted inside the base. The light transmitter is mounted on the base in a manner of able to adjust an angle.
The control module includes a wireless receiver, a controller, and a human-body sensor. The control module is connected to a light transmitter, so as to drive the light transmitter to light up in a remote control manner. The light transmitter is a laser transmitter.
The present invention makes good use of the remote control manner to drive the light transmitter to support the vehicle locator beacon. By mounting the vehicle locator beacon at different positions of the automobile, the driver can use the remote control lock to send out a driving signal to start the vehicle locator beacon when the driver returns to the parking lot to look for the automobile. The vehicle locator beacon then can cast a light-spot or a pattern on the wall above or near the automobile to guide the driver to find out the automobile very quickly. Hence the drawback of the inconvenience of looking for the automobile in the huge parking lot can be efficiently solved.
With reference to
With reference to
The wireless receiver 31 is used for receiving a remote-controlled driving signal transmitted by a wireless manner. The remote-controlled driving signal is sent by a remote control lock or a remote controller of an automobile owner. The controller 32 includes an input terminal coupled to an output terminal of the wireless receiver 31 and an output terminal coupled to the light transmitter 20. The human-body sensor 33 is coupled to the controller 32 for sensing a location wherein the light transmitter 20 cast a light, so to detect whether there is any human or not. In order to avoid harm, if any animal or human is detected in the light-cast location, the human-body sensor 33 notifies the controller 32 to stop the light transmitter 20. Hence the light transmitter 20 does not cast the light. In terms of technique embodiment to implement the human-body sensor 33, the light transmitter is made up by an infrared sensor. Therefore the human-body sensor 33 can detect heat generated by the animal of the human to judge whether the animal or the human stays at the light-cast location.
The practicable example of the preferred embodiment of the present invention of the vehicle locator beacon is clearly described as above. Furthermore, an operation method of the preferred embodiment of the present invention is introduced as follows.
With reference to
With reference to
Further, the position 41 above the dashboard inside the front windscreen as described in
With reference to
Furthermore, with reference to
Therefore, it can be clearly understood that the present invention makes good use of the remote control manner to drive the light transmitter to support the vehicle locator beacon. By mounting the vehicle locator beacon at the appropriate positions of the automobile, the driver can use the remote control lock to send out the driving signal to start the vehicle locator beacon when the driver returns to the parking lot to look for the automobile. The vehicle locator beacon then can cast the light-spot or the pattern on the wall above or near the automobile to guide the driver to find out the automobile very quickly. Hence the drawback of the inconvenience of looking for the automobile in the huge parking lot can be efficiently solved. Further, the light transmitter can adjust the angle of the cast light, so as to be able to determine the cast light direction to suit to local circumstances. Moreover, the vehicle locator beacon can further include the human-body sensor to ensure that the cast light will not cause any harm to the human or any animals. Therefore, the vehicle locator beacon of the present invention indeed includes features of good utility and unobviousness, so as to meet the requirements of a patent.
While the invention has been described by way of example and in terms of a preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited thereto. On the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements and procedures, and the scope of the appended claims therefore should be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar arrangements and procedures.
