Beacon Animation Pairing for Transport Service Bottlenecks

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Solution Overview

Problem

High-density areas like airports and stadiums face bottlenecks in transport service systems due to long wait times and inefficient pairing of drivers and users, as existing methods fail to optimize driver availability effectively.

Innovation Solution

Implementing beacon animation as a unique identifier for transport service drivers, allowing users to directly pair with available drivers through scanning a sequence of colors or signals displayed on vehicles, thereby reducing the need for extensive system intervention and minimizing wait times.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of time

If traditional system-mediated pairing methods are used in high-density areas, then system control and matching accuracy are maintained, but wait times increase and bottlenecks occur due to high volumes of users and drivers

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvewait timeVSAvoidpairing system complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of timeVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The driver's vehicle displays a beacon animation that users can directly scan with their mobile devices to initiate pairing. This self-service mechanism allows users to independently pair with available drivers without system-mediated matching processes, eliminating wait times and reducing system bottlenecks in high-density areas

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

Solution Approach 2:

The patent replaces the traditional mechanical system of system-mediated digital matching with an optical signaling system. The beacon animation displayed on the vehicle serves as a visual identifier that users scan using their mobile device cameras, substituting complex digital matching algorithms with direct optical recognition and pairing

Inventive Principle:

Principle #28Mechanics substitution (Replace mechanical system)

2Productivity

If system-mediated matching is used to optimize driver-user pairing, then matching accuracy based on multiple factors is achieved, but the pairing process creates bottlenecks in high-density areas

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepairing efficiencyVSAvoidpairing process simplicity

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts the identification function from the complex system-mediated matching process. The beacon animation on the vehicle serves as a standalone identifier that contains all necessary information for pairing, allowing users to directly initiate pairing by scanning the beacon without involving system-mediated matching algorithms

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

Instead of the system actively matching drivers to users through complex algorithms, the inversion approach allows users to actively initiate pairing by scanning the driver's beacon animation. This reverses the traditional flow where the system controls pairing, empowering users to directly pair with available drivers

Inventive Principle:

Principle #13The other way round (Inversion)

Data Source

PatentUS11599963B2Pairing transport service users and drivers using animation

Publication Date: 2023.03.07 UBER TECHNOLOGIES INC

AI summary

A transport service system receives a ride request from a user device of the transport service, the ride request specifying information about a trip and selecting a direct dispatch pairing mode. The transport service system receives from the user device an input animation, the input animation acquired by the user device from a driver device. In one embodiment the input animation is a sequence of flashing colors. Based on the input animation, the transport service system identifies the driver device and transmits the received ride request to the identified driver device. The transport service system receives an acceptance from the driver device and pairs the driver device and the user device for the ride.