Patent ID: 8217759
Filing Date: 2012-07-10
Classification: G01S,G06Q

Abstract:
1. A system for determining an activity involving at least one object at an indoor site, the system comprising: a real-time bi-directional object identifier device linked with each of the at least one objects for providing data identifying the at least one object, at least one fixed location identifier (FLI) providing data to determine a 3-D spatial location of the at least one object; at least one network connected element (NCE) providing data to determine the 3-D spatial location of the at least one object; at least one locale comprising spatial locations associated with a structural feature of the indoor site: a topology module comprising spatial locations mapped to the structural features of the indoor site, whereby the locales are defined by their spatial locations and stored, 3-D spatial locations of the FLIs and the NCEs are stored, and false-association threshold times for locales and object-types are stored; a location determining module (LDM) comprising an object location module (OLM) and an object association module (OAM), the LDM is configured to determine a location of the object from the data identifying the object, wherein the location of the object is a point in space defined by the 3-D spatial coordinates of the real-time bi-directional object identifier device; the object location module (OLM) is configured to calculate a 3-D spatial location origin of a signal from the at least one real-time bi-directional object identifier device comprising: known positions of the at least one FLI and the at least one NCE receiving the signal, historical recorded positions of the object, characteristics of the receivers receiving the signal, strength of the received signal, type of the signal, and whether the signal was repeated; the object association module (OAM) is configured to prevent false associations comprising an object type, a first locale (L1), a second locale (L2), a time spent in the first locale (tL1), and a time spent in the second locale (tL2), wherein if the tL1 is greater than or equal to a false association threshold time between L1 and L2 (tFALSE L1-L2) and the tL2 is less than the tFALSE L1-L2, association with L2 is prevented and only an association with L1 is made for the object having the specified object type, whereby a false association determination is prevented; an association determining module configured to determine an association between the at least one object and at least one of a locale, a role, and 3-D location based on the current 3-D location of the at least one object and its time duration there; an activity determining module comprising an activity detection sub-module and an activity information sub-module , the activity determining module configured to determine the activity involving the object based on the 3-D location of the object and activity information associated with predetermined activities; the activity detection sub-module comprising a pattern recognition application, the activity detection sub-module configured to detect an activity using a current location and a current locale based on correspondences of mapped contextual information, providing the detected activity to the activity determining module wherein the activity detection sub-module performs mappings of contextual information comprising mapping activities with minimum durations, mapping object identifiers with roles, mapping object identifiers with identities, mapping locales with activities, mapping current locales with activities, mapping a primary mean location with activities; mapping a primary mean locale with activities; mapping a primary mode location with activities; mapping a primary mode locale with activities; mapping roles with activities, mapping identities with activities, mapping associations with activities, mapping association types with minimum durations, mapping matched historical sets of locations with a set of current locations; mapping matched historical sets of locales with a set of current locales; and mapping combinations of current locale, role, identity, and association with activity, the pattern recognition application is configured to match the set of current locations with the historical set of locations and to match the set of current locales with the historical set of locales; the activity information determining sub-module comprising a mean/mode determiner, the activity information determining sub-module configured to determine items of information about an activity detected by the activity detection sub-module to provide to the activity determining module; the mean/mode determiner configured to determine the arithmetic mean and the mode of 3-D spatial locations of the object and the mean and the mode of locales of the object based on the present and historic values, wherein the arithmetic mean equals a sum of the present values and the historic values divided by the number of values, and wherein the mode equals the value most frequently occurring of the present and historic values, wherein the primary mean location is the arithmetic mean of 3-D spatial locations; wherein the primary mean locale is a the arithmetic mean of locales; wherein the primary mode location is the mode of 3-D spatial locations; wherein the primary mode locale is a the mode of locales; wherein the mean/mode determiner provides the primary mean location, the primary mean locale, the primary mode location, and the primary mode locale as items of information to the activity information sub-module; wherein the object identifier broadcasts the signal from the at least one real-time bi-directional object identifier device to the at least one FLI and the at least one NCE; the NCE sends data broadcast in the object identifier signal with a timestamp to the location determining module the location determining module determines a current location of the object in relation to known structural features of the site the location determining module determines a current locale associated with the current location of the object from the mappings in the topology module the association determining module determines the association between the at least one object and at least one of a locale, a role, and 3-D location based on the current 3-D location of the at least one object and its time duration there; and the activity determining module determines the activity involving the object based on the 3-D location of the object and activity information associated with predetermined activities.