Abstract:
An entry control system for allowing access permission to be granted remotely includes an access controller for generating an entry request signal. An authentication system coupled to the access controller determines whether prior authorization will cause prohibition of entry by a controller which holds an access permission state for a predetermined area of a controlled area.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS  
       [0001]    This is a continuation-in-part of copending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/577,336, filed May 22, 2000, and claims priority from U.S. provisional application No. 60/175,749, filed Jan. 12, 2000. 
     
    
     
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0002]    The invention relates in general to a method and apparatus for authorizing entry into a controlled area and in particular to a method and apparatus for enabling access to an area for delivery and pickup of commercial goods.  
           [0003]    Many individuals today are confronted with situations where there is no one at their home when access is required for delivery or pickup of goods or for performance of home repair services. Most people work during the day and are not able to be at home to accept goods being delivered, allow service people into their house to service appliances or perform installations such as, for example cable or telephone lines. Moreover, when trying to arrange a time to be home for delivery and repair services these service providers usually require someone to be at the house for half a day and will not pinpoint a specific arrival time. Increased ordering of goods on the Internet has created a greater need for facilitating home deliveries while the homeowner is at work. Home delivery of groceries requires some method to receive deliveries on a regular basis. For valuable goods or bad weather leaving delivered goods outside the house in an unsecured area is not a viable option. Further if the deliverer of the goods holds the goods to arrange to have the consumer pick them up, say during the weekend, the consumer is severely inconvenienced by the time delay in receiving the goods.  
           [0004]    Some catalogue and on-line merchants have arranged to have local stores such as convenience stores with extended hours to hold goods to be picked up close to home when the purchaser leaves work. However, this requires a substantial investment in developing such a network of “brick and mortar” delivery locations which are convenient in location and operating hours for a significant number of consumers.  
           [0005]    Many homes have entry systems which control various access points for the home, such as, for example, the automatic garage door operator which raises and lowers the garage door after it receives an appropriate signal from the associated control circuitry. Generally such control systems include input devices such as wall mounted keypads, hand held radio frequency transmitters or simple actuating buttons. Typically, security measures are imposed in these garage door opening systems to prevent unauthorized access to the garage area. For example, a keypad mounted on an exterior wall would require the entry of a secret code to allow the operation of the garage door operator for opening the garage door. Additionally, garage door operator hand held transmitter units communicate with the control circuitry of the garage door operator via encoded signals which attempt to ensure that only authorized individuals are granted access to the garage area. These type of systems are not limited to garage door operation but maybe extended to entry gates or even the front door lock mechanism of the house itself.  
           [0006]    With a garage door entry system a homeowner could give the delivery services a programmable code which can be entered in a keypad on an outside wall of the door. For security reasons the homeowner would not wish to give a third party permanent means to gain access to any part of their home while they are away. Some homes have home security systems which monitor entry into certain portions of the house including the garage door so that even if delivery personnel were given a code to open the garage door, security would further be compromised because they would need to have the code to deactivate the home security system at the time the goods were delivered. The same considerations would apply to having articles, such as, for example, dry cleaning, picked up. Leaving articles outside is not secure nor is it advisable to give third parties access to any part of the home for pick up or delivery.  
         SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
         [0007]    A principal object of the present invention is to provide an entry control system for permitting authorized users to access a controlled area. The entry control system has an access controller for generating an entry signal, an entry operator operatively coupled to the access controller which when actuated by an entry signal controls whether a predetermined area of the controlled area can be entered, and an authentication system operatively coupled to the accessed controller which determines whether a user is one of a group of authorized users, whether that user is authorized to access said predetermined area at a predetermined time and whether a prior access to the controlled area prohibits authorization for entry. In one aspect of the invention the predetermined area of the controlled area comprises a security zone defined by a home security system.  
           [0008]    An object of the present invention is that users of the system may be granted access to a predefined zone of a home secured by a home security system so that service personnel such as repairmen, cable or telephone installers may be permitted to gain entry to areas necessary for them to perform their duties but no other areas.  
           [0009]    In still another object of the present invention the access is limited by the number of entries already granted to the user of the system. Thus, after the service provider has entered to make repairs, or to perform the pick up or delivery of the designated items, the access authorization will no longer be recognized for purposes of permitting entry to the controlled resource such as the garage.  
           [0010]    The entry control system of the present invention by permitting authorized users access to a controlled area such as the homeowners garage facilitates home deliveries while the homeowner is at work by making it possible to have articles left in a secure location without compromising the overall security for the home. The individual requiring ability to have unattended access to the home may with the present invention control entry by identifying an authorized user group and defining parameters for access such as the area of the home to be accessed, the time at which the access can be made and the number of times a designated authorized user can gain access.  
           [0011]    The present invention allows for third party management of the entry control system so that delivery and pick up of goods can be fully managed by either the merchant or a contracted delivery service without requiring the time and overhead to schedule special times to meet the homeowner or developing a network of convenient delivery locations.  
           [0012]    Other aspects and advantages of the present invention will become obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the following specification and claims in light of the accompanying drawings. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0013]    [0013]FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an entry control system embodying the present invention;  
         [0014]    [0014]FIG. 2 is a view of a keypad of the entry control system shown in FIG. 1;  
         [0015]    [0015]FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the entry control system shown in FIG. 1 and utilizing radio frequency identification tags; and  
         [0016]    [0016]FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an entry control system used with a home security system in accordance with another embodiment of the invention, 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
       [0017]    Referring now to the drawings and especially to FIG. 1, an apparatus embodying the invention is shown therein and generally identified by reference numeral  10 . The apparatus  10  or entry control system  10  has a garage door operator  12  for permitting authorized users to access a controlled area. The garage door operator  12  operates a garage door  14  a garage  16 . A controller  18  generates a control signal  20  which causes the garage door operator  12  to either open or close the garage door  14 . In the presently preferred embodiment of the invention operation of garage door operator  12  is restricted to the homeowner or other users who are authorized by the homeowner by an authentication system  22 . Preferably garage door entry control system  10  is operable by a limited number of RF transmitters  30  which are carried in the vehicles stored in the garage. The RF transmitter  30  allows the owner to operate the entry control system  10  to open the garage door  14  from inside a vehicle.  
         [0018]    The authentication system  22  receives input from hand-held RF transmitters  30 , keypad  32  and communication link  36 . RF transmitter  30  and keypad  32  send request for opening and closing garage door  14  which are processed by authentication system  22 . Preferably authentication system  22  receives communications which must be decoded and decrypted and which contain access codes. In the presently preferred embodiment those access codes or access designations as shown in FIG. 1 are represented as being stored as authorized users  28 . Once the authentication system  22  confirms that a user is one of authorized users  28  then the controller  18  sends a control signal  20  to the garage door operator  12  so that the garage door  14  is opened. The keypad  32  is installed on the outside of the garage  14  to permit operation of garage door  16  after entry of an access code into keypad  32 . A user  24  would actuate the RF transmitter so that a signal would be sent to the authentication system  22  which would then validate the received RF signal and cause the controller  18  to send a signal  20  to the garage door operator  12  so that the garage door  14  would be opened and the user  24  may then enter the garage  16 .  
         [0019]    It is known that for safety reasons operation of a garage door should be by line of sight only or at least by users  24  in close proximity. A “close only” button  26  when activated will cause garage door  14  to close if it is already open. The garage door operator  12  can be any of a number of known configurations such as a belt drive, chain drive or other mechanism which cooperates with the garage door  14  to automate opening and closing of garage door  14 .  
         [0020]    The authentication system  22 , depending upon the level of security used by the entry control system  10 , will decode or otherwise receive the transmitted radio frequency signal and translates it into a signal which may be compared to signals from authorized users  28 . That is, the transmitted radio frequency signal will contain a coded designation which will be checked for correspondence with one or more entries in a list of coded designations or authorized users  28  by the authentication system  22 . If the transmitted signal corresponds to a designation within authorized users  28  the appropriate signal is sent to the controller  18  which will then cause control signal  20  to activate the garage door operator  12  causing garage door  14  to open or close.  
         [0021]    Operation of the keypad  32  is functionally similar to RF transmitter  30 . The keypad  32  shown in FIG. 1 is intended to represent a keypad which may be found at an unsecured location such as an outside wall  33  of the garage  16 . The keypad  32  is connected to the authentication system  22  in such a way that users  24  desiring access to garage  16  may enter a security code or other pass code which will allow entry control system  10  to authenticate the user as one of authorized users  28 . The keypad  32  may be connected to authentication system  22  via a radio frequency (RF) link in which case the communication transmission to the authentication system  22  would be essentially identical to that of radio frequency transmitter  30 . The keypad  32  may be hard wired to the authentication system  22 .  
         [0022]    The full featured keypad  32  shown in FIG. 2 can be used to manually program various functionalities or parameters for authorized access such as the number of entry operations, limits on time of day, or limits on the absolute period of operation. The owner of the entry control system  10  would program such functionality into the keypad  32  or the owner may access this programming via a communication link  36 .  
         [0023]    A communication link  36  which may be used to couple the entry control system  10  to a plurality of systems and networks  38  which are not physically located at entry control system  10  is shown in FIG. 1. The communication link  36  may represent either alternatively or in any combination an Internet connection, a land line wired connection, a wireless network, a packet switched network link, a public standard telephone network connection or an IR communication link. The communication link  36  connects the entry control system  10  into the network  38  or another node within the network  38  which is either local, i.e., a household network, or public network such as the Internet.  
         [0024]    In accordance with a present preferred embodiment of the invention the communication link  36  and the network  38  provide the communication link from an authentication provider system  34  to the entry control system  10  so that access can be granted to the garage  16  for the purposes of allowing delivery and pick up of goods when needed. The authentication provider system  34  is accessed when it is desired to permit a user  24  to enter the garage  16  for purposes such as pick up or delivery of items, or performing services such as repair of appliances or reading meters, etc. The authentication provider system  34  is coupled to the designations of authorized users  28  in order to control the authorization of access granted.  
         [0025]    A delivery service requiring access to the garage  16  is assigned a designation or access code which will be valid within the authorized users  28  for a limited or predefined period of time as determined by the authentication provider system  34 .  
         [0026]    The operative parameters or entry limitations are communicated to the entry control system  10  through the network  38  and the communication link  36 . Depending upon the type and nature of the communication link  36 , the network  38  and the data security used across these elements, the limitations or scope of access parameters may be stored locally in entry control system  10  or stored in an off-site location which may or may not be part of the actual physical authentication provider system  34  and may essentially consist of a distributed data base of authorized users  28 .  
         [0027]    The parameters associated with an authorized users permission to access garage  16  is the designation of the user within the group of authorized users  28 , the number of prior accesses granted to that user and time limitations such as time of day and duration of access granted.  
         [0028]    Authentication provider system  34  must issue something to the intended user which in this example will be a delivery person, which the delivery person can use to communicate to entry control system  10  that they are permitted entry to garage  16  because they have the designation corresponding to one of authorized users  28  and meet the other access permission parameters. Additionally, security measures should be implemented so that the intended delivery person is the only person allowed into garage  16  based on the assigned parameters for that user. That is, authentication provider system  34  is to communicate some data either physically or via a communication link which would uniquely identify the delivery person to entry control system  10 . Preferably the delivery person can be issued a access code which when they approach the garage door they may enter into keypad  32  in order to gain entry into garage  16 .  
         [0029]    Increased security can be provided by having biometric identification information stored within the parameters associated with each designation of one of authorized users  28 . Accordingly, biometric scanning or identification device would be, such as, for example, a retinal scanner, not shown, maybe directly coupled to authentication system  22  to uniquely identify that the intended delivery person is attempting to gain access. Other type security identification devices may be used such as, magnetically or RF encoded smart cards which may or may not include biometric information for the holder of the card.  
         [0030]    In FIG. 3 an illustration authentication provider system  34  is illustrated. Originating company  50  for a package being delivered is responsible for issuing an RF ID tag  52 . RF ID tag  52  contains identifying information of the delivered article so that when delivery service  54  arrives at the package destination tag detector  56  interrogates RF tag information from the package and compares it to information downloaded through communication link  36  to match the designation and permission parameter information to that stored within the data base of authorized users  28 . If the package delivery service are present at entry control system  10  within the prescribed limits then access to garage  16  will be granted in order to leave the package.  
         [0031]    [0031]FIG. 4 illustrates an alternative embodiment of the entry control system of the present invention which is designated generally by reference numeral  100 . As is the discussed with reference to entry control system  10  access has been controlled by direct control of the physical entry system which in the case of garage  16  is garage door  14 . However, in the case where there is an alarm system for the home and garage  16  is within a zone of the monitored home security system will then even if garage door  14  is opened a delivery person will not be able to enter garage  14  without setting off an alarm within alarm system  110 . Accordingly, a portion of communication link  36  may be connected to alarm system  110  in order to disable all or just the necessary zone of alarm system  110  so that a delivery person making a delivery will not set off the alarm when garage door  14  opens and physically grant access to the delivery person.  
         [0032]    While there have been illustrated and described particular embodiments of the present invention, it will be appreciated that numerous changes and modifications will occur to those skilled in the art, and it is intended in the appended claims to cover all those changes and modifications which fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention.