Patent ID: 6377210
Filing Date: 2002-04-23
Classification: G01C,G07C,G08G

Abstract:
A mobile object locator apparatus comprising:a datacenter; a plurality of receivers, one receiver mountable on one of a plurality of mobile objects, for receiving global positioning system signals from a global positioning system and calculating the position of the mobile object; a transmitter in communication with the receiver for transmitting the position information of the mobile object; a network including a wireless communication portion for receiving the position information from the transmitter and for transmitting the position information to a datacenter; the datacenter storing the position information in a user specific mobile object location database for all mobile objects of one user; map data for at least one geographic region stored in a map database; user terminal equipment; and a data network coupling the datacenter and the user terminal equipment in data communication, the user terminal equipment accessing the data network to selectively obtain the position information only from the user specific mobile object location database and the map data from the map database, the position information and the map data being transmitted separately through the data network in response to a user request.