Patent Publication Number: US-6664896-B2

Title: Article locating device using position location

Description:
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION 
     Identification and security devices are often kept small for convenience. Examples of such devices may include access cards and keys. The small size of these devices correspondingly means that it becomes easier to lose them. People commonly lose their keys and other such items. This may be serious, since without keys, an owner might not be able to operate their vehicles or enter their place of business. 
     Article finding systems are known in which a sound producing device is attached to the article to be found, e.g. the keychain. A separate remote device is actuated to cause the sound producing device to make noise. When the article finding device receives the special signal from the remote, it starts emitting its characteristic sound, thereby signaling its location. 
     This system may work so long as 1) the article is within earshot when the remote is pressed, 2) the owner can find the special remote, and 3) the article is within range of the remote. This seriously limits the use of such a system. For example, if the lost keys are under a pile of clothes, the user may not be able to hear the signaling sound. Moreover, if the user does not even have an idea of the geographical area of their keys (e.g. what room, what building, or the like,), then the system will not be able to find the keys, unless the remote happens to be in the same room as the keys. 
     SUMMARY OF INVENTION 
     The present application teaches a system in which a device may be associated with an article and is subsequently usable to find the location of the article. The embodiments describe a system which uses an electronic position detection location device along with a transceiver. The user can access the position from a publicly available network, e.g., a ‘client’ that is connected to an information server, such as a Web server or web service. 
     The client may be used to access the main system running on the server, and to request the position of the article by sending a request to position location detection device. That device has a transceiver which can receive these transmissions and also create transmissions back to the server which may be sent, correspondingly, to the client. Upon receiving a request, the transceiver determines its current position and reports information indicative of that current position. The position is then sent to the requesting client. The client can guide the user from their current location to the position of the article. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS 
     These and other aspects will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein: 
     FIG. 1 shows a basic diagram of the article finding system with keys attached, located on a cradle used to recharge its rechargeable battery; 
     FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of the lost article finding system; 
     FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of operation of the structure of the lost article finding system; and 
     FIG. 4 shows a flowchart of the Internet server operation. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     FIG. 1 shows a basic diagram of the system when applied to a lost key finding device. The article in FIG. 1 includes at least one key  100  which is connected, as conventional, to a key chain device here shown as  110 . The key chain device has a rechargeable power source, here battery  112 , therein. The rechargeable battery is preferably a battery without a memory effect, e.g. nickel metal hydride, or lithium ion type battery. 
     In this embodiment, the cradle  120  holds the key chain device and includes a non contact mechanism for recharging the battery using an inductive technique or the like. As an alternative, there can be contacts on the exterior of the key chain device, which come into contact with corresponding contacts on the cradle. The cradle is used to maintain the battery  112  at full charge level. As will be explained herein, the effectiveness of this system relies on the battery having sufficient charge to operate in the desired way. Therefore, certain advantages may be obtained by using a cradle that holds the key chain and also charges it at any given time. 
     While this application describes the power source being a battery, any other portable source of power could alternatively be used, e.g., a fuel cell. 
     A block diagram of the electronics in the key chain device is shown in FIG. 2. A housing  200 , which may be plastic or any desired material, holds the various electronic structure. A battery charging device  210  may be an inductor coil which receives applied resonant radiation in order to charge the battery  112 . As explained previously, an alternative system may simply use electronic contacts on an exterior of the housing  200 . 
     A processor  220  runs a stored program according to stored instructions in a memory  225 . A hardware based timer  230  is also provided which controls the sleep state of the processor  220  and the other associated hardware. In operation, most of the time, all of the hardware is maintained in a reduced power, or “sleep” state. This is done to reduce the power constraints of the battery  112 , thereby allowing the battery  112  to operate the circuitry when needed. 
     A position detecting device  240  may be any of a number of conventional position detecting devices. It may include a global positioning or GPS receiver, however this may have certain limitations due to the difficulty of receiving GPS signals in certain environments. It may be a so-called enhanced GPS receiver, which uses GPS that is enhanced using radio signals, such as cellular telephone signals. It may also be a so-called local positioning system or LPS, such as described in http://www.syptech.com/applications/applications.html. Any other positioning system which automatically determines a current position may also be used. 
     Alternatively, the position detecting element  240  may include an element that detects some aspect of the environment, such as a camera or the like. 
     The output of the position detecting device  240  is coupled to a transmitter/receiver device  250  which is connected to an antenna  260 . The antenna may be external to the device. 
     Antenna  260  may also receive signals which are sent globally and associated with the specific device. Transceiver  250  includes a unique device address ID shown as  270 , associated therewith. For example, the unique device address ID may be stored in a special register or read-only memory on or associated with the unit. Any transmissions will include the unique ID. Moreover, any receptions will be received and processed only when they include either the ID, or a special global information ID that indicates all devices. The kinds of signals that are received are described herein. The processor  220  may operate on the signals according to the flowchart of FIG.  3 . 
     In operation, the watchdog time circuit may maintain the circuitry within the keychain device in a “sleep” state, as conventional. Element  300  represents wake-up of the circuitry, which is carried out by the watchdog device  230 . When the circuitry first wakes up, it detects monitors the transceiver for transmissions. To the different kinds of transmissions can be received: said referred to herein as pings and requests being received by the transceiver  250 . At  310 , the system detects a “request”. A request is a signal sent by the server to the lost article locating device, requesting that the device report its specific position. This can occur when a user logs in to a client device, and commands location determination of the keychain device. The command for keychain location will cause a request to be sent to the specific keychain device. 
     If a request is detected at  310 , then the keychain device gets its current position at  315 , which is obtained from the position circuit  240 , in any conventional way. The information indicative of position is sent by the transceiver at  316 .  304  represents the sending of the position to the server who receives the position at  306  and stores the most recent position. This most recently stored position may be used indicates that the keychain device does not respond to her request. After storing the position, the server sends a confirmation at  307 . 
     The keychain system waits for confirmation from the server at  317 . 
     After receiving a confirmation from the server, the system is put back to sleep at  350 , by actuating the watchdog timer  230  to put all associated circuitry back to sleep. 
     If no “request” has been received at  310 , then  320  operates to detect a “ping”. A “ping” is a signal which is sent periodically from the server to the device, to make sure that the device receives the signal and is in a condition (e.g., position, battery state, etc) to respond. When a ping is received, the device first stores the time of the ping at  321 . In response to the ping, at  322 , the device sends an indication that the ping has been well-received, and an indication of the device&#39;s unique ID. At this point, the circuitry can again go back into the sleep mode. 
     If no ping is detected at  320 , then the time since the last ping is detected at  330 . Specifically,  330  detects if the time since the last ping is greater than a specified time t, which is defined as an alarm time. For example, if the ping is sent by the server every two hours, then a local alarm in the keychain device may be established if no ping has been received by the device in eight hours. This alarm causes the device to enter “scream” mode at  332 . Different techniques of effecting the scream mode may be used. In one embodiment, the transmitter is capable of transmitting at multiple different power levels. Scream mode may cause the transmitter to transmit at higher power levels then in the other modes. In another mode, special reserve battery power (e.g. a separate battery cell for example) is maintained and used only in scream mode. 
     More generally, however, in scream mode, the device carries out operations which make it more likely that the server will receive responses from the keychain device. For example, in scream mode, the device may increase its transmission power and immediately send an indication of its location. Scream mode may also allow the device to access its reserve power. This makes it more likely that the location of the device can be received and processed. Again, it is important that battery life is maintained. Therefore, after screen mode is entered, the device may still go back to sleep at  350 . 
     When the user wants to find their lost articles, the process is initiated by logging into the server via some terminal. FIG. 4 shows the login being via the Internet, however it should be understood that other forms of login to the server may be used. 
     At  400 , the user logs in to the server over the Internet by entering their user ID and password. The server is also shown carrying out a “ping” every specified amount of time, e.g. every two hours. The server monitors to determine whether it receives responses to these pings. When responses are received, it means, of course, that the article finding system has received the “ping”, has sufficient battery power to respond, has responded, and the conditions are such that the transmission is received by the server. When responses are not received, it means that any of these things are not operating correctly. The system may take certain actions in response, e.g., may request the scream mode. 
     After the user logs in at  400 , the user may send a request at  405 , to the article finder, requesting a position report. A response to this request for position report may be received at  410 . 
     In the usual case, the article finder responds by getting and sending its current position. The response is detected at  410 . At  415 , the system finds the current location of the client from which the user is requesting location information, and displays the information, including relative location. 
     The client location may be found by IP address or other automated techniques. As an alternative, the server may simply ask the client where it is located. After obtaining the client location, and obtaining the automatic location of the lost object, the system can determine the distance and direction to the client location. If the object is further than a specified distance, the system may also display a map of how to get there. 
     At  410 , if no response is received, the system continues the ping, shown as  420 . This continuing ping may also include instructions asking the device to go into scream mode, so that information from the article finding device can be more easily received. At  425 , the system may then display a message indicating that it is trying to find the lost article finding device. 
     Although only a few embodiments have been disclosed in detail above, other modifications are possible.