Land vehicle identification by flickering lamps

Abstract

Vehicles are identified by flickering LED's that may be mounted on their sides and/or incorporated into the brake lights or running lights. The flickering encodes an identifier, preferably the VIN (vehicle identification number), in binary format using a barcode type of encoding, ASCII, etc. The VIN is decoded by a detector. The detector may be coupled to a database to record a vehicle's identifier and/or to determine if the vehicle is stolen or wanted. If the identifier of a wanted vehicle is found, an alarm is sounded and/or information about the vehicle can be displayed. The flicker may repeat continuously or be repeated continually, at intervals. The intervals are preferably greater than the flickering duration, so that the flickers are spaced apart and therefore flickers from a group of vehicles will not overlap, permitting each vehicle to be individually identified without spatial localization. Because the LED's turn on and off rapidly, the flickers provide a very clean signal and mis-readings are minimal.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.