Autonomous Communication in Shipping
AssigneeUnited Parcel Service of America, Inc.
InventorsJohn A Olsen, David L Bradley, Rhesa M Jenkins
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention provides a system and method for the autonomous wireless communication between a service provider device and a customer device. The customer device may notify the service provider device whether the customer has work to be performed by the service provider. The service provider device may provide information to the customer about work to be performed by the service provider. In one embodiment, a shipping service is notified autonomously about items that a customer has for pick up and shipment. The shipping service is also capable of wirelessly transferring information to a customer device about items to be delivered to that customer.
Claims20
A method for determining whether a service provider needs to make a schedule pickup of an item at a customer location comprising:
- in response to global positioning system (GPS) of a mobile acquisition device detecting a geolocation corresponding to a customer location, establishing communication with customer computing devices associated with the geolocation, the communication established by sending electronic communication signals to network addresses associated with the customer computing devices;
- and
- autonomously receiving, via the mobile acquisition device while the mobile acquisition device is at the customer location, data from at least one of the customer computing devices indicating that an item is to be picked up at an additional address at the customer location.
An apparatus comprising at least one processor and at least one memory including computer program code, the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the processor, to cause the apparatus to at least:
- in response to global positioning system (GPS) of a mobile acquisition device detecting a geolocation corresponding to a customer location, establish communication with customer computing devices associated with the geolocation, the communication established by sending electronic communication signals to network addresses associated with the customer computing devices;
- and
- autonomously receive, via the mobile acquisition device while the mobile acquisition device is at the customer location, data from at least one of the customer computing devices indicating that an item is to be picked up at an additional address at the customer location.
A method for determining whether a service provider needs to make a schedule pickup of an item at a customer location comprising:
- in response to global positioning system (GPS) of a mobile acquisition device detecting a geolocation corresponding to a customer location, establishing communication with customer computing devices associated with the geolocation, the communication established by sending electronic communication signals to network addresses associated with the customer computing devices;
- autonomously receiving, via the mobile acquisition device while the mobile acquisition device is at the customer location, data from at least one of the customer computing devices indicating that no item is to be picked up at an additional address at the customer location.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.