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US 12,222,432 B2Granted
Method and apparatus for vehicle occupant location detection
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsMark A. Cuddihy, Eric L. Reed, Manoharprasad K Rao, Thomas Lee Miller
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system includes a plurality of wireless transmitters and a processor configured to: receive, from a mobile device, signal strengths of signals from the wireless transmitters as detected by the mobile device. The processor is also configured to determine a location of the mobile device in a vehicle, based on a distance from the mobile device to each of the wireless transmitters, as indicated by the received signal strengths and store the location of the mobile device as an occupant location.
Claims9
A method comprising:
- receiving vehicle GPS coordinates, at a mobile device, indicating a location of a vehicle;
- determining that mobile GPS coordinates of the mobile device correlate to the vehicle GPS coordinates, indicating that the mobile device is located within the vehicle;
- responsive to the mobile device being located within the vehicle, detecting signals from a plurality of vehicle-deployed antennas at a mobile device processor;
- determining, at the mobile device processor, respective signal strengths for each detected signal;
- determining a distance from each antenna, based on the signal strength of the signal received from each respective antenna;
- determining a location of the mobile device, at the mobile device processor, within a vehicle cabin, based on the distance from each antenna;
- transmitting the device location from a mobile device including the processor to a vehicle computing system;
- and
- transmitting a predetermined user identity along with the device location.
6 more elements
A system comprising:
- a mobile device processor configured to:
- receive signals from a plurality of vehicle-deployed antennas, each received signal indicating an antenna location, including a coordinate location within a coordinate system defined for the vehicle and the signals including include one or more seat locations defined as coordinate pairs for opposite corners of each received seat location;
- determine respective signal strengths for each detected signal;
- determine a distance from each antenna, based on the signal strength of the signal received from each respective antenna;
- determine a device location within a vehicle cabin, based on the distance from each antenna and the indicated locations of the antennas;
- transmit the device location to a vehicle computing system;
- transmit a predetermined user identity along with the device location.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.