Carrier locating system
AssigneeOlivetti Research Limited
InventorsAndrew Hopper, Roy Want, Roger M. Needham, David J. Wheeler
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for locating any mobile body or a plurality thereof within a predetermined environment, wherein each mobile body carries a transmitter (10 to 18), each transmitter producing a unique identifying signal, and a plurality of receivers (20 to 32) located in a corresponding plurality of defined regions in the environment, each receiver incorporating a FIFO buffer memory (28) into which carrier identifying data is inserted and a controller for interrogating the receiver means in turn to link the identification data with location data.
Claims15
A system for locating the whereabouts in a predetermined environment of each of a plurality of carriers, comprising:
- a) transmitter means on the carriers for transmitting identifying signals, each transmitter means producing a unique signal which therefore identifies the carrier;
- b) a plurality of receiver means respectively located in a corresponding plurality of separate defined regions making up the predetermined environment and each adapted to receive any of the unique identifying signals when any of the transmitting means are within range, each receiver means including a solid state FIFO buffer memory capable of sequentially storing carrier identifying data of a plurality of different carriers, and into which carrier identifying data is inserted whenever a transmission from a carrier is received;
- and
- c) a controller adapted to interrogate each of the plurality of receiver means in turn, to address the FIFO buffer memory in each receiver and obtain and record the carrier identifying data therein in association with data defining the region within which the receiver is located, thereby linking the carrier identifying data with positional identifying data relating to the environment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.