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Automated unmanned rental system and method
| Details |
Inventors: Hunt, Douglas Harold;
Assignee: Audio Visual Services Corporation (Long Beach, CA)
Primary Examiner: Le; Thien M.
Assistant Examiner: Le; Uyen-Chau N.
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Gradisar; Stanley J.
An automated unmanned rental system enables the automatic tracking of rental activity and equipment movement. Each unmanned rental site has a computer system that monitors rental activity and monitors the available inventory and the rented, or checked out, inventory, and automatically generates invoices for items rented. The computer system controls an RFID tracking system that utilizes the RFID tags on each piece of audio visual equipment in cooperation with one or more antennas. The antennas send and receive signals that interact with the RFID tags when the equipment containing the RFID tag passes through a portal. The computer system has a user interface to allow for associating equipment rental activity with a user and a reference document. A reporting module may automatically communicate equipment movements. A security alarm module may trigger an audible alarm under defined circumstances. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION FIG.
1 shows a schematic/block diagram of an embodiment of an automated unmanned rental system of the present invention.
Referring now to FIG.
1, Automated Unmanned Rental System 100 enables the automatic tracking of rental activity and equipment movement.
Automated Unmanned Rental System 100 has a Central Rental Processing Center 102 which is in communication with a number of individual Unmanned Rental Sites 106 through Communications Medium 104.
There could be tens or hundreds of Unmanned Rental Sites 106, but only five are shown in FIG.
1 for simplicity.
Each Unmanned Rental Site 106 may be geographically located within the same structure, such as a building, within the same city in different buildings or structures, within the same state, within a multiple number of states, or in a number of different countries around the world.
Communications Medium 104 may be the Internet, an intranet, a LAN, a WAN, a wireless communication network, a satellite communication network, or any other suitable communications medium.
In one embodiment of the invention, Communications Medium 104 is the Internet, and each Unmanned Rental Site 106 from their different geographic locations are capable of accessing Communications Medium 104, and capable of being accessed by Communications Medium 104, through the Internet.
In another embodiment of the invention, there may be several Central Rental Processing Centers 102 in various geographic regions.
For example, each state in the country may have a Central Rental Processing Center 102 having various Unmanned Rental Sites 106 located throughout the state that report to it.
Or, several states may be combined into a region with one Central Rental Processing Center 102 responsible for all the Unmanned Rental Sites 106 within the region.
In another embodiment of the Automated Unmanned Rental System 100 of the present invention, each Unmanned Rental Site 106 is self contained and does not need to nor does it communicate with Central Rental Processing Center 102 through Communications Medium 104
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Finance 
