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US 12,598,174 B2Granted
Fleet management system and method
AssigneeViam Inc.
InventorsEliot Horowitz, Eric Daniels
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In variants, a fleet management method can include: determining information about a device; and sending information to the device, including authentication credentials, wherein the device can authenticate itself with other devices within the fleet using the authentication credentials. The fleet management system can function to scalably manage the operation and permissioning of one or more fleets of devices.
Claims19
A fleet management method, comprising, at a robot within a robot fleet:
- receiving a request from a requesting robot, the request comprising an automatically-expiring certificate;
- authenticating the requesting robot by comparing the automatically-expiring certificate against a set of automatically-expiring certificates locally stored by the robot, wherein the robot periodically solicits new sets of automatically-expiring certificates from a fleet management system, wherein the new sets of automatically-expiring certificates are determined before the robot solicits the new sets of automatically-expiring certificates and are not sent to the robot until the robot solicits the new sets of automatically-expiring certificates;
- and
- responding to the request responsive to authenticating the requesting robot, comprising actuating a physical component of the robot, wherein actuating the physical component of the robot comprises actuating the physical component according to a set of expiring instructions received from the fleet management system, wherein robot operation according to the expiring instructions is disabled when the automatically-expiring certificate expires.
1 more element
A device comprising:
- a robotic component;
- and
- a processing system comprising a set of processors configured to:
- control the robotic component;
- store a first automatically-expiring certificate;
- and
- send a request to a second device within a fleet, wherein the request comprises the first automatically-expiring certificate and a programmatic instruction, wherein the second device:
- authenticates the device by comparing the first automatically-expiring certificate to a second automatically-expiring certificate stored on the second device;
- and
- actuates an onboard physical component according to the programmatic instruction received from the device in response to the authentication, wherein actuation of the onboard physical component according to the programmatic instruction is disabled when the first automatically-expiring certificate expires,
- wherein the second automatically-expiring certificate is determined by a fleet management system, wherein the fleet management system determines the second automatically-expiring certificate without transmitting the second automatically-expiring certificate to the second device until a solicitation is received from the second device.
8 more elements
A method comprising, at a fleet management system:
- determining a set of automatically-expiring certificates;
- receiving a request from a first robot in a robot set after determining the set of automatically-expiring certificates;
- sending a first automatically expiring certificate from the set of automatically-expiring certificates to the first robot after receiving the request, wherein:
- the first robot authenticates the identity of a second robot by comparing a certificate received from the second robot against the first automatically expiring certificate, and actuates a physical component onboard the first robot according to the request in response to authentication of the second robot identity, wherein actuating the physical component onboard the first robot comprises actuating the physical component according to a set of instructions, wherein operation of the first robot according to the set of instructions is disabled when the first automatically expiring certificate expires;
- and
- determining a new automatically-expiring certificate set without sending a certificate from the new automatically-expiring certificate set to the first robot until a next request is received from the first robot.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.