Patent ID: 6879893

Claim:
A monitoring system for a fleet of vehicles, comprising: at least one data acquisition and analysis module (DAAM) mounted on a vehicle in the fleet, each said DAAM i) collecting data indicative of measurable attributes of the vehicle, ii) analyzing said data to generate analysis results that identifies the state of one or more sub-systems of the vehicle based on said measurable attributes, and iii) transmitting at least a portion of said analysis results; a control module mounted on the vehicle and in communication with each said DAAM mounted on the vehicle, said control module i) collecting said analysis results transmitted from each said DAAM, ii) analyzing said analysis results so-collected to generate vehicle status results that identify potential sources of vehicle anomalies based on the state of said one or more sub-systems, and iii) transmitting said analysis results so-collected and at least a portion of said vehicle status results; and a terminal module located remotely with respect to the vehicle and in communication with the vehicle as well as other vehicles in the fleet wherein each of the other vehicles in the fleet is equipped with their own said at least one DAAM and said control module, said terminal module i) collecting, from the fleet of vehicles, said analysis results and said vehicle status results transmitted from each said control module, ii) analyzing, for the fleet of vehicles, said analysis results and said vehicle status results transmitted from each said control module to generate fleet results that identify multiple occurrences of said vehicle anomalies and multiple occurrences of ones of said one or more sub-systems operating at a performance level that is unacceptable, and iii) transmitting said fleet results for use by one or more interested organizations.