3252 results about "Travel time" patented technology

A geographic based communications service system that includes a network and a plurality of access points connected to the network and arranged at known locations in a geographic region. One or more service providers or information providers may be connected to the network to provide services or information on the network. Content provided by the service providers may be based on the known geographic location of the user of a portable computing device (PCD). The known geographic location may be determined with a high degree of precision, using one or more access points and one of several different techniques. In one embodiment, the geographic location of the PCD may be determined within a radius of ten feet. Access points may be configured to determine the bearing of a signal received from a PCD, as well as the strength of the signal transmitted by the PCD. Access points may also be configured to send and receive signals with time stamps. These time stamps may be used to calculate signal travel time, thereby allowing a determination of the distance between an access point and a PCD. Each access point may include location circuitry. The location circuitry may include both analog and digital circuitry configured to perform the various methods used to determine the precise geographic location.

A system comprise a server configured to communicate vehicle information with a vehicle transceiver of a vehicle moving along a vehicle route and communicate drone information with a drone transceiver of a drone moving along a drone route. A computing device with a memory and a processor may be configured to communicatively connect with the server, process the vehicle information and the drone information, identify a plurality of pickup locations based in part on the vehicle information and drone information, select at least one of the plurality of pickup locations based in part on a priority score associated with a travel time to or wait time for each of the plurality of pickup locations, and update the drone route based in part on the selected pickup location.

A method for managing appointments using a wireless device includes receiving scheduling data for a future appointment including a time associated with the future appointment. A current location of the wireless device is determined, and a reminder for the future appointment is provided at a time prior to the future appointment based on the current location of the wireless device. For example, the reminder may be provided at a time that varies based on the current location of the wireless device, a location associated with the future appointment, and an estimated travel time between the current location of the device and the location associated with the future appointment. Related methods, devices, and computer program products are also discussed.

A method and apparatus generating a departure alert for an event based on a current location. The method may comprises: obtaining scheduling data associated with a first event, wherein the first event scheduling data includes a first event time value and a first event location value, obtaining a device location value, obtaining a current time value, determining if the first event location value and the device location value differ by more than a event location threshold, upon a determination that the first event location value and the device location value differ by more than the event location threshold, estimating a first travel time value from the device location and the first event location, generating a departure time value by comparing the first event time value and the estimated first travel time value, and generating a departure alert by comparing the departure time value and the current time value.

Aspects of the disclosure relate generally to generating and providing route options for an autonomous vehicle. For example, a user may identify a destination, and in response the vehicle's computer may provide routing options to the user. The routing options may be based on typical navigating considerations such as the total travel time, travel distance, fuel economy, etc. Each routing option may include not only an estimated total time, but also information regarding whether and which portions of the route may be maneuvered under the control of the vehicle alone (fully autonomous), a combination of the vehicle and the driver (semiautonomous), or the driver alone. The time of the longest stretch of driving associated with the autonomous mode as well as map information indicating portions of the routes associated with the type of maneuvering control may also be provided.

A lane-level vehicle routing and navigation apparatus includes a simulation module that performs microsimulation of individual vehicles in a traffic stream, and a lane-level optimizer that evaluates conditions along the candidate paths from an origin to a destination as determined by the simulation module, and determines recommended lane-level maneuvers along the candidate paths. A link-level optimizer may determines the candidate paths based on link travel times determined by the simulation module. The simulation may be based on real-time traffic condition data. Recommended candidate paths may be provided to delivery or service or emergency response vehicles, or used for evacuation planning, or to route vehicles such as garbage or postal trucks, or snowplows. Corresponding methods also may be used for traffic planning and management, including determining, based on microsimulation, at least one of (a) altered road geometry, (b) altered traffic signal settings, such as traffic signal timing, or (c) road pricing.

A system, method, and computer program product for determining lane information in a road segment to drive a first vehicle to minimize travel time. According to an embodiment, navigation data of the first vehicle and at least one other vehicle in a road segment is sent to a computer server system via their respective clique leaders through a communication network. The lane information may include whether a change of lane is required, a lane to avoid, an optimum lane, and rank order of drivable lanes according to increasing order of travel time for the first vehicle to minimize travel time. The determined lane information is sent to the appropriate user device through its clique leader. The user device presents the lane information to a human driver and / or autonomous vehicle driving system of the first vehicle appropriately.

An organization system using location information, possibly in conjunction with time based information for tasks, with the purpose of optimizing user travel distance and / or time to complete specified tasks. Task organization may include alternate criteria such as importance, or sharing and assigning of tasks over groups to optimize in terms of the time / location / schedule of other members of the group. The mobile system may alert users of some tasks based on the user proximity to those tasks, alert of other tasks based on both time and location, or others based solely on the current time and the time of the task. The system can provide a dynamic schedule, changing based on time estimates of the user tasks as well as actual time to complete user tasks, estimates of travel time between tasks, as well as other criteria.

Techniques are disclosed for performing free-time searches that exploit information of the type used with electronic calendars. By leveraging advanced calendaring system information and using location, other context information such as corporate policy, legal constraints, and technology constraints, and user-specific preferences to provide a complete picture of a person's availability, the functionality (and therefore the value) of scheduling systems in increased, resulting in an ability to schedule meetings with more accuracy and less rework. Various allowable participation types for meeting invitees may be specified, and each invitee's availability is determined accordingly. Location-sensitive travel times (including optional user-specific travel time adjustments) are used in preferred embodiments when in-person participation is required.

Patients with certain chronic diseases such as diabetes require medical treatment according to a set time-related treatment plan. Such a treatment plan must be adapted accordingly in the case of long-haul journeys to countries with a time difference. A method for this has the steps of recording an regular treatment plan for administering the medicine, recording the point of departure and destination as well as the time of travel of the long-haul journey, determining the time zone difference between the point of departure and the destination and producing an adapted travel treatment plan based on the regular treatment plan depending on the time zone difference and the time of travel. The invention enables a patient to achieve a structured adaptation of his individual treatment plan to the time difference in the destination country of the journey in a convenient manner.

The present invention provides a system for coordinating multiple vehicles in a passageway environment (e.g., in underground mines). The system includes methods and apparatus for determining the global position and orientation of a vehicle in said passageway environment, and methods for planning routes and monitoring the travels of multiple vehicles in said passageway environment. A global position and orientation estimation system employs one or more odometric sensors and one or more range sensing devices. It works in three basic steps. In the first step, it records and processes sensor data that is descriptive of the passageway environment by moving the system through said passageway environment. In the second step, it generates a globally consistent map of said passageway environment. Finally, real-time localization is provided by employing odometric sensors and range sensing devices to determine the system's global position and orientation with respect to said globally consistent map, both initially and as it travels through the passageway environment. A route planning method accepts higher-level goals for a set of multiple vehicles in said passageway environment and generates a route plan for each vehicle that minimizes the travel time for the group of vehicles, while at the same time avoiding collisions between vehicles. Route plans are sent to the vehicles for implementation and a monitoring method tracks the global positions and orientations of the vehicles and ensures that both safety and efficiency are maintained.

A method and system for identification, tracking and locating in wireless communications and wireless networks. The method and system use reference and / or pilot signals that are present in wireless communications and wireless networks. The method and system might also use RTT, TOA and time-stamping measurements / techniques to determine one or more reference signals traveling time between the Base Station (eNB) or its functional equivalent and mobile device (UE) and or network device. Other wireless networks that do not use reference and / or pilot signals may employ one or more of the following types of alternate embodiments of present invention: 1) where a portion of frame is dedicated to the ranging signal / ranging signal elements; 2) where the ranging signal elements are embedded into (spread across) transmit / receive signals frame(s); and 3) where the ranging signal elements are embedded with the data. The method and system includes multi-path mitigations processor and multi-path mitigations techniques and algorithms which improve the track-locate accuracy. The method and system allow achieving increased accuracy by using multi-path mitigations processor and multi-path mitigations techniques and algorithms. The techniques of Digital Signal Processing and Software-Defined Radio are used.

A traffic information providing system externally acquires traffic information including information relating to the travel time of a link, calculates a travel time for a non-provision link to which no travel time is provided through estimate / complement operation. The estimate / complement operation is carried out with use of travel times, emergencies, travel times of links in the vicinity of the non-provision link, and so on, obtained in the near past. The system stores and statistically processes the externally-acquired traffic information, and also estimates a travel time in the near future. When there is an abnormality in the acquired traffic information, the system deletes the abnormality, regards the information as a non-provision link, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of links, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of the entire route made up of a plurality of links, and also calculates a probability for a specific travel time range.

A meeting locator system enables users, each having a mobile phone equipped with locative sensing capabilities, to receive locative data from one another. The meeting locator system displays the location of each user upon a visual map on a mobile phone of at least one user. The visual map is automatically scaled to simultaneously display the location of each user. The meeting locator system computes midpoint location (geometric or geographic) between the users and displays the midpoint over the visual map as an approximate location where the users are likely to meet. The midpoint location can be updated and further adjusted based upon an estimated travel time for each user to reach the midpoint. The estimated travel time is computed based upon a current speed of each user, a recent average speed of each user, a computation of path lengths between each user, and / or other travel conditions and is displayed.

An apparatus and method of charging and housing of an unmanned vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is disclosed. The apparatus includes an accommodator to accommodate an aircraft, a landing platform on which the aircraft lands, a housing portion to monitor state data by housing or charging the aircraft, and a sensor to assist in landing of the aircraft by allowing the aircraft to communicate with the apparatus. The apparatus enhances operational efficiency by reducing a travel time of the aircraft.

A transportation system and a method for operating the transportation system are provided. The transportation system provides a flexible, on-demand, and door-to-door transportation service to improve the accessibility of an existing public transit system. The transportation system may be operated by or in conjunction with the transit system and is uniquely different from either taxi, shuttle, or bus service. A vehicle of the transportation system transports a passenger between a pickup location and a predetermined node in response to a service request initiated by the passenger according to instructions that are dynamically determined in real time in consideration of the pickup location, a current location of the vehicle, and a predetermined travel time between the pickup location and the node.

A method comprising accessing an electronic application on a handheld device to determine a time and a location of an upcoming event. The method also comprises determining factors affecting travel time and using said factors to determine an amount of travel time for a user to timely arrive at the upcoming event. The method further comprises providing an alert to the user based on said amount of travel time.

Providing traffic information by using operational data developed by a wireless communication network to generate traffic information. Location information from the network can be combined with computerized street maps to measure the time it takes to get from one geographic area to another. By aggregating and analyzing anonymous data from thousands of devices, the present invention is able to determine real-time and historical travel times and velocities between cities, intersections and along specific routes.

Embodiments include a computer-implemented method that includes receiving a first geographic location, a second geographic location, and a search topic, identifying an intermediate location between the first and second geographic locations, wherein at least one of the travel times or the travel distances from the intermediate location to each of the first and second locations are approximately equal, identifying a set of search results responsive to the search topic, wherein each search result is associated with a location that is within a predetermined distance of the intermediate location, ranking each of the search results based at least in part on the location associated with the search result, and providing the set of ranked search results for display.

The invention discloses an intelligent coordination control method of a dynamic bi-directional green wave band for an urban traffic trunk road. The method comprises the steps of starting, processing coordination parameters, processing intersection parameters, processing time and processing cycle, etc. The method adopts a double-stage control structure, namely, a control layer of a traffic control center server and a control layer of an intersection intelligent signal controlling machine, through the information interaction and the coordination of the traffic control center server and the intersection intelligent signal controlling machine, phase sequence is optimized in an on-line manner; and common period, highway section upper phase difference, highway section down phase difference, the starting time of an upper coordination phase, the starting time of a down coordination phase, green ratio at each intersection and other key control parameters are optimized and calculated on a real-time basis. The intelligent coordination control method gets rid of the limit of equal intersection intervals required for the coordination control of the green wave band for the urban traffic trunk road, and realizes the unceasing travel of bi-directional traffic flows on the main road by applying the traffic engineering technique, the artificial intelligence technique and the automatic control technique, thereby reducing the parking rate while the traffic capacity of the trunk road is improved, and obviously reducing the traveling time.

An inventory management system utilizes unattended facilities remote from a central warehouse for service parts logistics. Items are placed in inventory in secure enclosures at the unattended facilities by the inventory management service. The unattended facilities may be located near one or more customers to reduce a service technician's travel time and customers' inventory costs. A service technician utilizes a passcode to retrieve needed items. The service technician may order items that are not kept in the inventory of the unattended facility in which case the items may be delivered to the unattended facility and the service technician may receive a notification related to all the items that comprise an order that the order is ready for pick up at an unattended facility. Unused, used or damaged parts may be returned by a technician to a remote secure enclosure where such returned parts may be retrieved and disposed of, repaired or placed back into inventory if not damaged or after repair, and the processing of such returned parts begins by information entered into a data entry device at the remote secure enclosure location. Return items that are not damaged may be included in the inventory of an unattended facility.

An inventory management system utilizes unattended facilities remote from a central warehouse for service parts logistics. Items are placed in inventory in secure enclosures at the unattended facilities by the inventory management service or are delivered directly to the unattended facility. The unattended facilities may be located near one or more customers to reduce a service technician's travel time and customers' inventory costs. A service technician utilizes a passcode to retrieve needed items. The service technician may order items that are not kept in the inventory of the unattended facility in which case the items may be delivered to the unattended facility and the service technician may receive a notification related to all the items that comprise an order that the order is ready for pick up at an unattended facility. Unused, used or damaged parts may be returned by a technician to a remote secure enclosure where such returned parts may be retrieved and disposed of, repaired or placed back into inventory if not damaged or after repair, and the processing of such returned parts begins by information entered into a data entry device at the remote secure enclosure location. Return items that are not damaged may be included in the inventory of an unattended facility.

A system and method are disclosed for providing a customized travel guide and customized travel itinerary, combining segments from multiple travel service providers. The system programmatically creates itineraries, checking for time constraints and interferences. Travelers prioritize activities allowing for a traveler to instruct the service to expand or shrink the trip time to include all activities of highest priority, or vice versa. In addition, the service can make recommendations for activities and scheduling based upon the traveler's profile, other traveler's ratings and recommendations, and similar user profiles. Output can be used in an offline mode, or, upon connecting to the online service, take advantage of automatic alarms and updates should the planned activities data change. With the addition of a GPS locating device, or through tracking the dates of travel, the system is able to present the traveler with only the data most relevant to their location while traveling.

A system comprises a plurality of acoustic transmitters, mounted inside the streamers, adapted to transmit broadband signals having low cross-correlation between the signals of different transmitters; a plurality of acoustic receivers, mounted inside the streamers, adapted to receive the signals from the transmitters; at least one processor adapted to cross-correlate the signals received at the receivers with copies of transmitter signals to determine identities of the transmitters of the received signals and to determine travel times of the received signals; and a main processor adapted to convert the travel times to distances between the identified transmitters and the receivers and to determine relative positions of the streamers from the distances.

A knowledge-based system and method for establishing and managing routes for emergency vehicles. The knowledge-based system and method uses a knowledge base having information useful in establishing and managing routes for emergency vehicles including information on intersections, road segments connecting intersections, expected travel time along the road segments, and dynamic factors that influence traffic flow, and a database for storing routes designed using the information useful in establishing and managing routes. The knowledge-based system also consist of one or more software modules operable to retrieve information from the knowledge base and to perform operations such as designing routes between location involved in emergency response, selecting between such routes, and modifying such routes all using information in the knowledge base.

A traffic routing method and apparatus for navigation system provides accurate prediction of departure and travel times by using current and past traffic incident information. The traffic routing method includes the steps of forming a database of traffic incident information which is constituted by current traffic incident data and past traffic incident data, setting a condition and priority for retrieving the traffic incident information, retrieving the traffic incident information from the database based on the condition and priority, and applying the retrieved traffic incident information to a route to a destination and calculating a predicted travel time and a departure time.