Patent ID: 8146009

Claim:
A method of displaying information pertaining to a fleet of vehicles, the method comprising: receiving status information pertaining to a plurality of vehicles in a vehicle fleet; selecting first vehicles, from the plurality of vehicles, that are geographically related, wherein the first vehicles are fewer in number than the plurality of vehicles, and wherein the first vehicles are geographically related if the physical locations of the first vehicles are within a geographic area defined by a virtual bounding area; defining a cluster comprising the first vehicles; electronically generating, with a computer system comprising computer hardware, a graphical user interface for presentation to a user, the graphical user interface comprising a geographic map and the cluster, wherein the cluster is overlaid on the geographic map in the geographic area defined by the bounding area wherein the cluster is configured to display on the graphical user interface at least one item of the status information pertaining to the first vehicles; and splitting the cluster into a plurality of clusters in response to a user of the graphical user interface zooming in on the geographic map by identifying the coordinates of each of the first vehicles, wherein splitting comprises dividing the virtual bounding area into slots, grouping the first vehicles into the slots based on each of the first vehicles' pixel coordinates, and generating new clusters to replace the cluster, wherein each of the new clusters comprises at least one of the first vehicles and comprises every one of the first vehicles that was grouped into a given one of the slots.