Patent ID: 8543135

Claim:
A method for determining if a mobile device is in a vehicle comprising: monitoring an acceleration of the mobile device for a first time interval during a first period of time, and a rotation of the mobile device for a second time interval during a second period of time; calculating one or more characteristics of the acceleration of the mobile device during the first time interval and one or more characteristics of the rotation of the mobile device during the second time interval; comparing the one or more characteristics of the acceleration to a first set of threshold values and the one or more characteristics of the rotation to a second set of threshold values; and determining a state of the mobile device based on the comparison of the one or more characteristics of the acceleration to the first set of threshold values, and the one or more characteristics of the rotation to the second set of threshold values, wherein the state of the mobile device comprises an in-vehicle state if the acceleration is greater than a first minimum threshold and the rotation is less than a first maximum threshold and a non-vehicle state if the acceleration is less than the first minimum threshold or the rotation is greater than the first maximum threshold, wherein the one or more characteristics of the acceleration include at least one of mean magnitude, maximum magnitude, minimum magnitude, standard deviation, other statistical metrics, information theoretic metrics, or combinations thereof and the one or more characteristics of the rotation include at least one of mean change in yaw, mean change in pitch, mean change in roll, maximum change in yaw, maximum change in pitch, maximum change in roll, minimum change in yaw, minimum change in pitch, minimum change in roll, standard deviation of the change in yaw, standard deviation of the change in pitch, standard deviation of the change in roll, other statistical metrics of yaw, other statistical metrics of pitch, other statistical metrics of roll, information theoretic metrics of yaw, information theoretic metrics of pitch, information theoretic metrics of roll, or combinations thereof.