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Automated proximity notification
| Details |
Inventors: Stern, Edith H.;
Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)
Primary Examiner: Corsaro; Nick
Assistant Examiner: Orgad; Edan
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Lieber; Robert, Tomlin; Richard A.
The disclosed system and method for automated proximity determination and notification is useful to enable a customer or client of a business or other enterprise (e.g. a public library, a government facility, etc) to automatically obtain a predetermined service, on arrival at a destination associated with the business or enterprise, without having to communicate orally with representatives of the business/enterprise. A portable programmable wireless communication device is carried by users of such services. The device, termed a PLAD (pervasive location aware device), receives a program and proximity notification parameters associated with each destination to be visited, when service is reserved relative to the destination. Thereafter, as its user travels to the destinations, the PLAD is activated and uses the program information and parameters acquired in the reservation process to perform a proximity notification transmission characteristic of this invention as the device reaches a predetermined range of proximity to a destination. For that purpose, the PLAD calculates its distance to each currently valid destination at which a service is reserved, and sends a proximity notification signal to an address associated with a respective destination when its distance to the respective destination is less than a predetermined threshold radius limit acquired during the reservation process. Receiving equipment at the address uses the proximity notification signal to arrange for prompt execution of a reserved service when the user of the PLAD arrives at the respective destination. The PLAD also can be used in a reverse context--when its user is at a specific location and the service is being delivered to that location by a vehicle carrying another PLAD operated by or for a business/enterprise--to alert the user to the imminent arrival of that vehicle. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION In accordance with this invention, users of presently contemplated services employ state of art programmable portable instruments that are adapted to be programmable to be effectively aware of their locations and to begin automatic transmissions of pre-arranged signals (typically, in a wireless mode), to business sites providing the services, as respective users reach a predetermined distance of proximity to such sites.
The pre-arranged signals include signals identifying respective users.
Preferably, programming of such instruments is effected before or during a trip to a destination offering the service.
Such programming is implemented, through wireless or other data communication networks, either by businesses providing the services or third parties operating as agents of these businesses.
Furthermore, the pre-arranged, signal transmissions preferably are in a standardized form enabling different types of businesses (requiring different proximity factors for beginning activation of their services and different actions for implementing respective services) to use common reception equipment to: a) properly identify authorized users of their services, and b) begin activating respective services exclusively for such users.
Furthermore, such programming preferably is sufficiently flexible to allow different businesses to establish different proximity conditions for triggering user-identifying transmissions.
Although portable instruments that are programmable to be effectively aware of their locations are presently state of the art, a distinction of the present invention is that its instruments are programmable by diverse entities or persons to perform presently contemplated signaling functions as users of the instruments reach predetermined proximity to sites at which services and/or functions associated with their programming are to be completed.
Instruments generally "aware" of their geographic locations (either by communications with earth satellites or with cellular relay stations) are presently termed "pervasive location aware/communicating devices" (abbreviated as "PLAD's")
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Cell Phones 
