Smart city apparatus, system, and method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10637683-B2
Application number	US-201615390061-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 23, 2016
Priority date	Dec 23, 2016
Publication date	Apr 28, 2020
Grant date	Apr 28, 2020

Abstract

Novel tools and techniques are provided for implementing Internet of Things (“IoT”) functionality. In some embodiments, a computing system or IoT management node might receive sensor data from one or more IoT-capable sensors, analyze the sensor data to determine one or more actions to be taken, and identify one or more devices (e.g., household devices associated with a customer premises; vehicular components associated with a vehicle; devices disposed in, on, or along a roadway; devices disposed throughout a population area; etc.) for performing the determined one or more first actions. The computing system or IoT management node then autonomously controls each of the identified one or more devices to perform tasks based on the determined one or more first actions to be taken, thereby implementing smart environment functionality (e.g., smart home, building, or customer premises functionality, smart vehicle functionality, smart roadway functionality, smart city functionality, and so on).

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
receiving, with a computing system, at least one first sensor data from each of one or more Internet of Things (“IoT”) -capable devices of a plurality of IoT-capable devices disposed throughout a population area via machine-to-machine communications, each of the one or more IoT-capable devices comprising one or more first sensors that collect the at least one first sensor data;
analyzing, with the computing system, the at least one first sensor data to determine one or more first actions to be taken;
identifying, with the computing system, one or more devices disposed within the population area for performing the determined one or more first actions to be taken, based on the at least one first sensor data from each of the one or more IoT-capable devices, wherein the identified one or more devices comprises one or more dynamic lane change markers disposed on or embedded within a surface of each of one or more roadways; and
autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform one or more tasks, based on the determined one or more first actions to be taken, wherein autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform:
autonomously controlling, with the computing system, the one or more dynamic lane change markers on the one or more roadways to dynamically change lane markers to at least one of change a number of lanes or shift the lanes to divert around a predicted position of at least one of a person, an animal, or a first vehicle, wherein at least one of changing the number of lanes or shifting the lanes is based on an estimated position and an estimated speed of one or more second vehicles relative to a calculated vector path of at least one of the person, the animal, or the first vehicle.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the population area is one of a sub-division, a collection of sub-divisions, a village, a town, a city, a municipal region, a state, a province, a collection of states, a collection of provinces, an island, a collection of islands, a country, a collection of countries, a continent, a collection of continents, a space station, a space vehicle, an orbital habitat, or a habitat disposed on a different planetary body.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the computing system comprises one of an IoT management node disposed at a service provider facility associated with providing services to the population area, a municipal, state, federal, or private entity IoT management node, a plurality of municipal, state, federal, or private entity IoT management nodes, a computing system disposed at a vehicle traffic control center, a cloud computing system, a distributed computing system that integrates computing resources from plurality of IoT-capable devices, or a combination of two or more of these computing systems.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform the one or more tasks comprises sending, with the computing system, one or more first control instructions to each of the identified one or more devices to perform the one or more tasks, based on the determined one or more first actions to be taken.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform one or more tasks comprises autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to halt or reroute traffic around one of a construction zone, an accident area, a school zone, or a congested portion of traffic.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the identified one or more devices comprise at least one of a navigation system disposed in each of one or more third vehicles travelling on the roadway or one or more traffic control signal devices, wherein autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to halt or reroute traffic comprises autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to halt or reroute traffic, by performing at least one of sending updated navigation instructions to the navigation system disposed in each of the one or more third vehicles travelling on one or more roadways, sending control instructions to the one or more traffic control signal devices along the one or more roadways, or dynamically changing lane markers along the one or more roadways.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein rerouting traffic comprises at least two of rerouting a first set of vehicles along a first alternative path, rerouting a second set of vehicles along a second alternative path, or rerouting a third set of vehicles along a third alternative path, around the one of the construction zone, the accident area, the school zone, or the congested portion of traffic.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identified one or more devices comprise at least one of a navigation system disposed in each of the one or more second vehicles travelling on the roadway, a navigation system disposed in each of one or more emergency response vehicles, one or more traffic control signal devices, one or more news media access devices, one or more user devices associated with each of one or more residents of the population area, one or more electronic billboards, one or more digital street signs, or one or more display devices disposed through the population area, wherein the one or more IoT-capable devices each comprises one of one or more pressure sensors, one or more temperature sensors, one or more motion sensors, one or more structural integrity sensors, one or more solar light sensors, one or more seismic sensors, one or more weather station sensors, one or more air quality sensors, one or more moisture sensors, one or more wind sensors, or one or more particulate sensors, wherein, based on detection of signs of disaster comprising at least one of a tornado, flooding, lightning storms, hurricanes, blizzards, fires, smog, meteor impact, airplane crash, automobile accident, construction accident, train accident, building collapse, dam breach, or terrorist attack, autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform the one or more tasks comprises autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the at least one of the navigation system disposed in each of the one or more second vehicles travelling on the roadway, the navigation system disposed in each of the one or more emergency response vehicles, the one or more traffic control signal devices, the one or more news media access devices, the one or more user devices associated with each of the one or more residents of the population area, the one or more electronic billboards, the one or more digital street signs, or the one or more display devices disposed through the population area to direct emergency response teams to locations of the disaster while directing residents and other people away from the disaster.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more IoT-capable devices comprise at least one of one or more pressure sensors, one or more temperature sensors, one or more motion sensors, one or more communications signal detectors, one or more user devices associated with one or more users, or one or more location sensors disposed in the one or more user devices, wherein the identified one or more devices further comprise at least one of one or more street lamps or one or more traffic control signal devices, wherein autonomously controlling, with the computing system, each of the identified one or more devices to perform one or more ta

Assignees

• Centurylink Ip Llc

Inventors

• Funk Tom
• Carpenter Phil
• Walker William R

Classifications

• G08G1/205

  Indicating the location of the monitored vehicles as destination, e.g. accidents, stolen, rental · CPC title

• G08G1/096844

  where the complete route is dynamically recomputed based on new data · CPC title

• G08G1/166

  for active traffic, e.g. moving vehicles, pedestrians, bikes · CPC title

• H04L67/12

  specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks · CPC title

• G08G1/163

  involving continuous checking · CPC title