International Business Machines Corporation

Michael C Greenwood

Te-Kai Liu

Paul Andrew Moskowitz

Kiyoshi Maruyama

Lawrence I Lieberman

David A Wood

Shun-Shing Chan

Lawrence L Lieberman

Cars of a car rental system are made operable by having a renter present a digital key issued from the car rental system. The digital key specifies the starting date and time of a given rental transaction, and the identification of the car the key is for. The digital key is further signed by the car rental system for authenticity. A prospective renter makes online reservation over the Web and downloads into a portable storage device a digital key which can be used to operate the reserved car on the day the reservation is made for. On the pickup day, the renter goes to the car and inserts the portable storage device into a slot on the car. Upon successful verification of the digital key, the car is enabled and the renter can keep the car until he or she wants to return the car. The return process starts by having the renter obtain a invalidated digital key from the car. Once the rental car invalidates the digital key provided by the renter, the renter can no longer operate the rental car. Since the in-car controller is able to decipher the given authorization information, there is no need to re-program the in-car controller for each renter. The renter will be held liable for the rental car until he or she presents the invalidated digital key to the central station of the car rental system. To prevent a lost digital key from being used by unauthorized parties, a digital key can contain information such as a personal identification number (PIN) or a hash of the PIN of the authorized renter. For extra protection, the renter can opt to include his or her PIN in the digital key when the key is created by the car rental system. The parking lot of the car rental system can be operated without security personnel checking for proper authorization.

Access control for rental cars

A system produces of an empirical map of wireless communication coverage through a process of combining information from individual clients to produce a map which is then shared by all of the clients. The wireless coverage map aids in maintaining a reliable communications link. The empirical map is generated by combining information from a group of mobile wireless users. The group may consist of a fleet of trucks, taxicabs, government service vehicles, or the customers of a wireless service provider. The mobile vehicles must be equipped with a GPS device or be located by other means such as triangulation. While vehicles are moving, the quality of wireless communication, e.g., signal strength or communication continuity, is recorded for each vehicle as a function of positions. The data from all of the vehicles is combined to produce the empirical map. The empirical map may be maintained at a central site and subsets of the map replicated for individual vehicles. The map may then be used to direct mobile users to sites of superior communications reliability, warn mobile users when they are out of the service area or are about to leave the service area, or to regulate data communications automatically to stop and restart communications as a mobile vehicle passes through a gap in coverage.

Dual map system for navigation and wireless communication

A system and method for delivering electronic messages over a wireless cellular communications network when the sender of a message is out of the coverage area of any cell within the network. With this method the message is broadcast repeatedly until a mobile wireless courier receives the message when it is range and stores the message. When the courier is within range of a base station of the cellular communication network, it then transmits the stored message to the base station for transmission to a requested destination.

Wireless message courier

A mobile navigation system implemented as an embedded system in a vehicle is easy to use, does not detract the driver's attention from the road, and limits the number of choices presented to the user of the navigation system according to a predetermined set of preferences or personalized information. Choices are filtered according to a set of driver preferences, according to the vehicle's geographic position, direction of motion, and the driver's intended itinerary. The itinerary, including intermediate stops, is calculated on an external computing system. The information is downloaded from the computing system to a memory device such as, for example, a smart card. The information is then transferred from the smart card to the embedded vehicle navigation system. In one application of the invention, a kiosk located at a car rental agency may be used to create and store personalized navigation information onto a smart card which the customer then inserts into the vehicle navigation system that is installed in the rental car.

System for personalized mobile navigation information

A method for exchanging information between vehicles involved in or near a collision site. When a collision is sensed by one vehicle, a message is transmitted from the one vehicle to at least one of the other vehicles within a threshold distance of the one vehicle. The message contains at least the identity of the one vehicle and preferably driver information, insurance information, along with the time and place of the collision.

Growing community of inventors

Holmes, NY, United States of America

Michael C Greenwood