179 results about "Mile" patented technology

This invention is a vehicle data recorder with the capability to continuously record and store selected data on both driver and vehicle performance that will include but not be limited to, miles driven, speed, acceleration/deceleration, brake activation, seatbelt usage, vehicle direction, steering anomalies, global position, impact forces and direction, transmission status, and alcohol usage. Specifically, this recorder will have extended data storage capacity, a drunk driver prevention smart ignition, real-time GPS data, low-power cell phone jamming, and internal wireless communication capabilities. It uses microprocessor controlled electronics to record, store, and transmit both driver and vehicle performance data in a date and time stamped file which can be utilized to establish personalized insurance rates, assess road tax and use fees, locate “Amber alert” victims or stolen vehicles, and with it's on scene access, provide critical mechanism of injury information to emergency responders.

Content is frequently replicated across IP-based networks such as the Internet. Replicas are stored in caches throughout the network. However, to date there has been no mechanism to allow users not directly associated with the replicas to access replicas. Therefore although a copy of a content item may be stored geographically nearby, it may still be necessary to obtain the original content item from a server many thousands of miles away.

By recording the location of content items and producing a mapping of a content item to all known replicas, it is possible to produce an authoritative proxy associated with a particular domain which is able to provide a list of URLs of alternative replica copies of a requested content item. In this way, a content request proxy associated with a requester of a content item may choose the best location for retrieving the content item from a list which may include local caches not directly associated with the requester.

A user may be identified and authenticated to an institution system and may adjust the annual miles driven estimate for their vehicle. The annual miles driven estimate is used in the determination of the premium for the vehicle insurance for the vehicle. The premium for the vehicle insurance may be revised based on the adjustment by the user to the annual miles driven estimate. In an implementation, the user may reduce the annual miles driven estimate to zero to indicate that they are not driving the vehicle. The user may keep some elements of the vehicle insurance coverage and the vehicle insurance policy may remain active although the annual miles driven estimate is zero.

A system and method for identifying and offering rewards. The method comprises the steps of determining a user's transaction history or category history, such as, for example, spending history, transaction history, merchant history, purchases history, services history, product history, channel history, frequency of spending history, SKU history , redemption history, reward earnings history, earning levels, reward categories, currency type (e.g., points, miles or cash), or any other particular related to a reward category), currency history, customer responses to questions, and/or other data or information that enables identification of relevant rewards. Next, the method dynamically prioritizes at least one reward category based on the user's transaction history or reward category history, and determines at least one top reward category based on the dynamic prioritizing of the at least one reward category. Finally, the method dynamically rewards the user discounts, rebates, coupons, or other reward incentives based on the least one top reward category.

A method and apparatus for sorting, prioritizing, identifying, managing, and otherwise controlling (collectively, "controlling") a communication. A frank may be used to associate a value and a class with a communication. The communication may be associated with the frank through the method of selecting a frank associated with a value from among a plurality of frank types, each of the frank types having a pre-assigned value, associating the frank with the communication, and initiating transmission of the franked communication across a network. Value may include anything important of having meaning to the parties, including, for example, money, credit (or a promise to pay), frequent flier miles, and so forth. "Franking" a communication generally associates some indicia of value and/or a service class with a communication.

A system and method for calculating and applying insurance costs. For vehicle insurance under one embodiment of the present invention, insurance costs are calculated on a per-mile basis in a nonlinear fashion, assigning different levels of risk based upon the distance driven by a customer. In one embodiment of the present invention, the first miles or kilometers driven by a customer are assigned a greater level of risk than later-driven miles or kilometers. The present invention provides an actuarial method that more closely conforms the cost of insurance for a particular vehicle to its annual mileage by creating a Rate Per Mile Factor (RMF), where the RMF is expressed as a function of annual mileage.

The present invention teaches a solar cell, a solar module, a solar array, a network of solar arrays, and also a solar power grid suitable for providing power for industrial, residential and transportation use. A solar cell or solar module including a plurality of solar cells can be made in a structure configured to have the appearance of natural foliage. Accordingly, a solar array including a plurality of solar modules each including at least one solar cell can be made to resemble a palm tree, a deciduous tree, an evergreen tree, or other type of natural foliage. A network of solar arrays can be made to resemble a row or grove of palm trees, and thus meet the functional and aesthetic demands of landscape architecture. The network of solar arrays can extend for many miles alongside roads, highways, railways, pipelines, or canals, and can further include means for storing and transmitting electric power. In particular, a network of solar arrays can be in communication with recharging stations for use by electric and hybrid transportation vehicles. Accordingly, a network of solar arrays can form at least a portion of a solar power grid.

A system and method are disclosed in the illustrative context of a loyalty program (LP) for managing the distribution of currency units (points or miles) from at least one currency issuer (LP manager) to at least a selected one of a plurality of currency recipients (LP members) associated with the currency issuer. The currency issuer maintains an account for keeping the balance of currency units held by each of its currency recipients. The currency user also must approve each primary user to which it issues currency units. The system and method facilitate at least one primary user to acquire currency units from the one currency issuer and to distribute same to selected of the plurality of currency recipients.

The invention discloses an indoor movable robot real-time navigation method based on visual information correction, comprising the following steps of: (1) initializing a robot navigation system, and starting a mile meter and a visual sensor; (2) obtaining the current position of a robot by the mile meter and the visual sensor and forming a kalman filter so as to obtain a mile meter filtration estimation value and a visual sensor filtration estimation value; (3) fusing the mile meter filtration estimation value and the visual sensor filtration estimation value; and (4) resetting parameters. The invention sufficiently utilizes the respective advantages of visual information and mile meter information and combines the precision of the visual information and the real-time property of the mile meter information; the invention utilizes the mile meter self information to carry out the recurrence computation to obtain navigation data at most of the time, thereby ensuring the real-time requirement of the navigation system; in addition, the invention also utilizes the visual information to correct the accumulated errors generated in the dead reckoning of the mile meter, thereby greatly enhancing the accuracy of the navigation system.

One of the persistent irritations of daily life is forgetting where you parked your car. In small lot, this is merely annoying. When there are multiple lots a mile or more apart, and it is impractical to park in the same spot every time, finding one's car can become a major waste of time. The car-finder overcomes these difficulties by using an existing GPS-enabled (or otherwise location sensing) device, such as a cell phone, automatically identifying recent parking locations used by the user, allowing the user to select among them, and guiding the user to the parked vehicle.

A unitized device and method to optimize directional antenna alignment for long-distance communications using the low-cost IEEE 802.11 (and related) compatible RF-chipsets (originally designed for short range Wireless-LAN and Wireless-PAN networks). The device combines these chipsets, along with a microprocessor, software, electronics to drive a directional antenna, and the motors and gearing necessary to physically move a directional antenna, into a unitized low weight, and low cost assembly designed to enable reliable digital radio links of many miles or more to be established with minimal costs, time, and installer skill. In one embodiment, the software methods incorporated into the software of this unitized device can include methods necessary to automatically or semi-automatically configure and align the directional antenna to one or more distant target sources. Various mechanical designs, as well as various software and electronics methods, are also disclosed.

A portable electronic device is disclosed. The electronic device can be used inside a motor vehicle to collect and store information regarding operation of the motor vehicle. The electronic device can include a processor and a digital memory. The processor can determine miles traveled by the motor vehicle during a trip and store data representing the miles in the digital memory with a trip identifier identifying the trip. The miles traveled can be determined using data from a location sensor, such as a global positioning satellite device, that determines locations of the motor vehicle during the trip. The electronic device can also include an audio mechanism into which a user can speak information about the trip. Such audio data can be stored in the digital memory and associated with the trip identifier. Other data representing information about the trip can also be stored in the digital memory. The electronic device can also include a mechanism for transferring data stored in the digital memory in association with the trip identifier to a computing device.

The invention discloses a method for real-timely processing automobile run mile statistic based on wireless network and GPS position information, comprising: obtaining a correction coefficient between the actual run miles of an automobile and a GPS data calculation distance via calibration method; based on the correction coefficient, using the run distance calculated from GPS position information to real-timely obtain run mile data; accumulating the data to obtain total run mile; buffering the collected automobile run record data and run mile into a RAM memory; calibrating the value after each calculation of the accumulated run mil and average speed to be stored; using window mechanism to transmit data to a computer processing system at a management center, to support the real-time effective detection of the management center on the real-time run state and run mile of automobiles, and support the statistic and analysis on the run mile for real-timely managing and effectively distributing automobiles.

This invention relates to mobile robot technique based on earth seam intelligent car visual device and its whole layout position method, which comprises the following steps: a, establishing environment layout earth seam map into system; b, sending the caught image signals by data line or collection program into top layer process unit; c, top layer process unit processes images to extract image seam information to form one local earth seam map; d, using intelligent mile information to reduce local map index range; e, searching the current local earth map and whole earth seam map.

The invention discloses a network violent video identification method based on multiple examples and multiple characteristics. The method for identifying the network violent videos comprises the steps of grasping violent videos, non-violent videos, comments on the violent videos, comments on the non-violent videos, brief introductions of the violent videos and brief inductions of the non-violent videos from a video sharing network, and structuring a video data training set; extracting textural characteristics from textural information of the training set, forming textural characteristic vectors to train a textural pre-classifier, and screening out candidate violent videos by using the pre-classifier; using a shot segmentation algorithm based on a self-adapting dual threshold for conducting segmentation on video segments of the candidate violent videos, extracting related visual characteristics and voice frequency characteristics of each scene to express the scene, taking each scene as an example of multi-example study, and taking video segments as a package; and using an MILES algorithm for converting the package into a single example, using a characteristic vector for training a classifier model, and using the classifier model for conducting classification on the candidate violent videos. By the utilization of the network violence video identification method, bad influences that the network violent videos are broadcasted without constrain are largely lightened.

An accessory device for vehicles, such as automobiles and light trucks, that automatically creates a log of all trips taken by the vehicle. The log includes date, time, odometer reading, stopping location, and miles traveled from previous stop. The device produces a log in a format that meets the regulation of tax collecting agencies and accounting firms regarding the separation of mileage by personal use and business use. The device allows a user to purge the log as desired.

A driving directions system loads into memory a limited subset of prerecorded, spoken utterances of geographic names from a mass media storage. The subset of spoken utterances may be limited, for example, to the geographic names within a predetermined radius (e.g., a few miles) of the driver's present location. The present location of the driver may be manually entered into the driving directions system by the driver, or automatically determined using a global positioning system (“GPS”) receiver. As the vehicle moves from its present location, the driving directions system loads into memory new names from the mass media storage and overwrites, if necessary, those which are now geographically out of range. Based on the current location of the driving, the driving directions system can audibly output geographic names from the run-time memory.

Disclosed is a detecting device for hit determination by detecting a light shot from a transmitter. The detecting device according to the invention comprises a plurality of detecting elements. Each detecting element includes an optical detector cell of a planar shape for generating an electric signal when detecting a light, a protection case of a cylindrical shape for supporting the optical detector cell housed inside thereof, a set of lead wires, each of which being electrically connected to an anode electrode and a cathode electrode of the optical detector cell for supplying the electric signal generated from the optical detector cell to hit determination means, and a protection shield located on a front light detecting surface of the optical detector cell for protecting the optical detector cell from external environment and passing the light. The protection case of a cylindrical shape has an open front surface. The optical detector cell of a planar shape has a light detecting front surface adjacent to the open front surface of the protection case, and a rear surface supported by a packing material packed inside of the protection case. The set of lead wires is elongated from the rear surface of the optical detector cell and protected by the packing material.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) systems and methods utilizing the systems are disclosed for producing a useable form of energy utilizing warm surface seawater and cold seawater from depths up to 2 miles below the surface and utilizing a multi-component working fluid. The systems and methods are designed to maximize energy conversion per unit of cold seawater, the limited resource, achieving relative net outputs compared to a Rankine cycle using a single component fluid by at least 20% and even as high as about 55%.