Methods, apparatuses and products for associating external devices to vehicles and usage of said association. One method obtains information from one or more mobile devices that are connected to the external device. The information is used to determine that the external device is associated with a vehicle, whereby another mobile device is enabled to determine that it is being located on the vehicle based on the mobile device being connected to the external device. Another method obtains an indication that a mobile device is connected to an external device. A database is accessed to retrieve an associated of the external device with a vehicle, whereby it is deduced that the mobile device is located in or on the vehicle. In response to the deduction, a predetermined action may be performed.

Systems and methods are provided for selectively restricting a mobile device. In one implementation, a visual capture can be to identify one or more indicators within the visual capture. Based on the indicators, an implementation of a restriction at the mobile device can be adjusted. In another implementation inputs can be processed to compute a determination, determination reflecting at least one of the in-vehicle role of the user as a driver and the in-vehicle role of the user as a passenger; and, an operation state of the mobile device can be modified based on such a determination. According to another implementation, one or more outputs can be projected from a mobile device, inputs can be received, and such inputs and outputs can be processed to determine a correlation between them. A restriction can then be modified based on the correlation.

Systems and methods are provided for consolidating and transforming object-descriptive input data to distributed rendered location data. The systems and methods are configured to receive object-descriptive input data from a plurality of input devices, consolidate the object-descriptive input data and correlate it with a plurality of physical objects, determine first and second subsets of the plurality of physical objects based on a proximity of each of the physical objects to each of a plurality of user devices, construct user device-specific graphical maps each indicating a route to each object in a subset, and instruct each user device to display a graphical map constructed therefor.

A range between a first wireless device and a second wireless device is estimated using a first mechanism based on messages transmitted over a first communication channel. The first communication channel is associated with a first radio access technology capability of the wireless devices. One or more metrics indicative of an accuracy of the range estimates provided by the first mechanism are obtained. A second mechanism to estimate a range between the first wireless device and the second wireless device may be implemented in favor of the first mechanism when the metric fails to satisfy a criterion. The second mechanism is based on unicast messages transmitted over a second communication channel. The second communication channel is associated with a second radio access technology capability of the wireless devices and may be the same as, or different from, the first communication channel.

A system and method for monitoring a vehicle uses a wireless mobile device. The wireless mobile device, such as a cell phone, smart phone, PDA, etc., includes some of the hardware that could be utilized to monitor and analyze data and transmit the data (or summaries, statistics or analyses of the data) to a central server. This can greatly reduce the overall cost of the system. The data can be used to determine an insurance rate or as a speed probe for creating traffic maps, for example.

Disclosed are a parking location checking system and a parking location checking method using the same, which can quickly and easily find a parking location even if a user who has parked a car in a parking lot does not remember the location of the parking section in which the car is parked, and can guide the user to the parking location and, simultaneously, even transmit various types of information or advertisement content to the user by executing the various type of information or advertisements through a smartphone. The parking location checking system and the parking location checking method using the same can quickly and easily find the parking section in which a car is parked just by allowing a smartphone to approach or come in contact with an NFC tag even if a user does not remember the location of the parking lot in which the user's car is parked, thereby remarkably improving the user's convenience and even creating additional profits by posting an advertisement therein while using the parking location checking system.

A method for exchanging information between in-vehicle terminals, and an in-vehicle terminal is provided. The method includes a first in-vehicle terminal that triggers, by sending a broadcast message, at least one surrounding second in-vehicle terminal to establish a first relationship with the first in-vehicle terminal, and establishes a second relationship with at least one third in-vehicle terminal. The first in-vehicle terminal separately exchanges information about a correspondence type with the at least one second or third in-vehicle terminal so that more vehicles can intelligently exchange in-vehicle information, and exchange different information with different in-vehicle terminals. This can properly protect privacy information.

The present invention provides a method and an apparatus tear scheduling a transmission resource in a vehicular network, so as to resolve problems in the prior art that signaling overheads of a base station are increased and load of the base station is increased because a manner of scheduling by the base station is used to obtain a transmission resource. The method is: receiving, by a terminal, micro network system information that is sent by a node and that carries a micro network identifier and a node identifier, so as to access a micro network; when a communication task is generated, determining a target resource scheduling manner according to the communication task; obtaining a target transmission resource in the accessed micro network according to the determined target resource scheduling manner; and eventually sending, based on the target transmission resource, data that corresponds to the communication task.

A system and method is provided that facilitates passive building information discovery. The system may include a processor configured to track positions in a building of portable devices over time and based thereon determine characteristics of the building including locations in the building where at least some of the portable device are unauthorized, based on communications received from radio-frequency (RF) sensors mounted in spaced-apart relation across the building. Such communications may include information detected by the RF sensors from RF signals from the portable devices that uniquely identify each portable device. The processor may be configured to determine when at least one of the portable devices is detected via a communication from at least one of the RF sensors at a determined unauthorized location in the building, and responsive thereto provide at least one notification that indicates that the at least one portable device was detected at the unauthorized location.

Systems and methods for intersection assistance using dedicated short range communications are disclosed. An example vehicle includes a dedicated short range communication transceiver and an intersection assistor. The example dedicated short range communication transceiver is configured to receive safety messages from other vehicles. The example intersection assistor is configured to, before the vehicle reaches an intersection, determine a likelihood that there will be space for the vehicle on the other side of the intersection, and display a recommendation on whether to proceed through the intersection based on the likelihood.