Vehicle Tracking System with Geofencing and Motion Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Large car dealerships face challenges in tracking specific vehicles among hundreds, as conventional GPS and cellular systems consume excessive battery power and fail to distinguish between test drives, temporary loans, and sales activities, leading to inefficient lot management and sales insights.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle tracking system utilizing a combination of GPS receivers, accelerometers, and wireless modems to intelligently manage power consumption and differentiate between vehicle movements, incorporating geofencing and smartphone apps to track test drives and sales representative activities, providing detailed insights for sales optimization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If conventional GPS receivers and cellular modems are used to track vehicle locations, then location tracking capability is improved, but battery consumption increases excessively
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements periodic action by enabling GPS and cellular modems only at specific intervals triggered by vehicle movement detection via accelerometer. The tracking device monitors vehicle motion and activates location services only when movement is detected, rather than continuously, thereby reducing battery consumption while maintaining effective location tracking capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The accelerometer-based movement detection system enables self-service by automatically triggering location tracking based on vehicle motion. The system monitors itself for movement and autonomously activates/deactivates GPS and cellular services without continuous manual control, optimizing power usage while maintaining tracking effectiveness.
2Device complexity
If raw location information is tracked and reported, then location data collection is simplified, but ability to distinguish between test drives, loans, and sales activities is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple data sources including accelerometer motion data, GPS location information, cellular network data, and time stamps to create a comprehensive vehicle activity profile. By combining these diverse data types, the system maintains simple location tracking while extracting rich contextual information to distinguish between test drives, temporary loans, and sales activities.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by continuously analyzing vehicle movement patterns, location changes, and temporal data to determine activity type. The accelerometer provides real-time feedback on vehicle motion, which feeds into the decision-making process to classify activities, enabling the system to maintain simple data collection while deriving complex activity insights.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system effectively tracks vehicle movements, distinguishes between test drives and other activities, and communicates real-time availability, enhancing sales performance metrics and lot management by reducing battery drain and improving sales insights.
Implementation Method 1
an accelerometer for generating vehicle motion data
Implementation Method 2
a GPS receiver for generating vehicle location data
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus for managing information regarding an inventory of vehicles on an automobile dealership lot includes vehicle tracking devices installed in the vehicles. The tracking devices utilize a GPS receiver for generating vehicle location data and an accelerometer for generating vehicle motion data. Data from the vehicle tracking devices are received by a central server that uses the data to determine whether a vehicle is on a test drive, the identity of a salesperson who is with the vehicle, and the estimated time that the vehicle will return to the dealership. Preferred embodiments establish a geofence around the dealership location, detect when vehicles exit and reenter the geofence, and communicate the exit/return events back to the central server. The central server communicates the information to smartphones of dealership personnel to indicate availability of a particular vehicle. Some embodiments also aggregate the information from multiple sensors to report on key metrics for optimizing dealer sales performance.