On-board terminal for taxis or similar

Abstract

 On-board terminal for taxis or similar, comprising a transceiver unit (12) able to receive and transmit digital information from and to a remote operational center (13) which menages any taxi's service like trips or similar, at least a text-to-speech unit (17b) able to transform the digital information received from the remote operational center (13) and related to the service assigned to a taxi into speech and to broadcast the information inside the taxi by means of a loudspeaker (23).

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0001] This invention concerns an on-board terminal for taxis, hire vehicles or boats or similar, provided with a transceiver device able to connect with an operational station or center which coordinates and controls.

[0002] The on-board terminal allows the driver to receive from the center, and to transmit thereto, both in digital form - "data" - and also verbally - "voice" - all the information which is useful for his service, such as the destination to be reached, the route to be taken, whether he is free, the time expected, the traffic conditions or other, without the driver having to take his hands from the steering wheel.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0003] The state of the art includes on-board terminals for taxis which allow the driver to receive by radio or by telephone, from an operational center, communications concerning a particular destination or address which the driver has to reach. Normally the systems of assigning the addresses (trips, orders) from the operational center to the taxis located around a particular territory, or associated with the particular operational center, are of two types.

A) A human or automatic operator or speaker makes the assignments by voice; in this case the driver wishing to accept the order communicates to the operational center, either by voice or by activating a data transmission, that he is available, after which he reaches the desired destination autonomously.

B) The central computer makes the assignments directly to the taxi nearest the client and with the characteristics requested by the client; the taxi can be booked either by means of an automatic satellite positioning system or because it is keyed into the on-board terminal by the taxi-driver. In this case the data relating to the client's address is transmitted, in digital form (data transmission), from the operational center to the on-board terminal of the taxi, which displays them on a display or monitor. The on-board terminal is also provided with a keyboard by means of which the driver can communicate with the operational center, so that he can insert commands and request messages to be displayed.

[0004] Therefore, with conventional systems, the driver receives the information through the display of the on-board terminal and, through the keyboard, is able to transmit information to the operational center.

[0005] This entails that the driver has to remove at least one hand from the wheel, when he has to use the keyboard, and has to remove his eyes from the road, when he has to consult the display of the on-board terminal; therefore, either he performs these operations after he has stopped the car, or he puts at serious risk his own safety and that of others, and also infringes the norms laid down by the Highway Code.

[0006] JP-A-09016894 discloses a device for cars having a GPS reception equipment and a character display device with a touch panel switch which detects the present waiting region and the vacant or resting state of the vehicle and transmits the detected state information by radio to an operation management communication center.

[0007] US-A-5,970,456 discloses a traffic information apparatus comprising a microcontroller a keyboard, a display, a vocabulary memory and a speech synthesizer which generates, in analog form, on the base of binary codes, phonemes for a loudspeaker.

[0008] Neither the JP-A-09016894, nor the US-A-5,970,456 shows or suggests an on-board terminal for taxis or similar, having a transceiver unit able to receive and transmit digital information from and to a remote operational center which menages any taxi's service like trips or similar, and which allow the taxi driver, while he is driving, to receive and transmit information from and to a remote operational center without having the need to take his hands from the steering wheel or to remove his eyes from the road or traffic.

[0009] The present Applicant has devised and embodied the on-board terminal according to the invention to overcome these shortcomings.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0010] The on-board terminal for taxis or similar according to the invention is set forth and characterized in the main claim, while the dependent claims describe other innovative characteristics of the invention.

[0011] One purpose of the invention is to achieve an on-board terminal for taxis, hire cars or boats or similar which, either instead of or in addition to displaying information on an on-board display, reproduces vocally the information transmitted to the taxi from a taxi's remote operational center.

[0012] In accordance with this purpose, the on-board terminal for taxis according to the invention comprises a text-to-speech unit able to transform into speech the digital information received from the taxi's remote operational center and related to the service assigned to a taxi.

[0013] In this way, by means of a loudspeaker connected thereto, the text-to-speech unit allows the driver to hear the destination address and all other information transmitted by the operational center, while he is driving, without having the need to remove his eyes from the road or traffic.

[0014] The delivery of the text is achieved by means of a Digital Sound Processor (DSP), which, by means of a plurality of phonemes memorized in a memory connected thereto, managed by a conventional program, decodes the message received in digital form and destined to be displayed on the on-board terminal display, and broadcasts it, amplified, through the loudspeaker, which can also be that of a voice transceiver possibly already on board the car or boat.

[0015] Another purpose of the invention is to achieve an on-board terminal which is also able to decode the commands and information imparted by the driver himself, vocally, to transform them into corresponding digital data to be transmitted to the remote operational center, instead of or in addition to using a keyboard or console.

[0016] In accordance with this purpose, the on-board terminal comprises a speech recognition unit, which is able to recognize and decode the speaker's voice and to transform it into corresponding digital data, irrespective of who is speaking ("speaker independent").

[0017] In this way the driver can, for example, insert the destination address of the client simply by speaking it into a microphone connected to said speech recognition unit. This data input phase can be facilitated by the fact that the on-board terminal has all the names of the streets memorized in its random access memory (RAM), and therefore does not require the complete address to be spoken.

[0018] The speech recognition unit allows to insert commands and addresses without the driver having to remove his hands from the wheel or his eyes from the road.

[0019] The on-board terminal according to the invention is also provided with an alarm system which, if activated, provides to transmit: the position of the car in real time, acquired by the GPS satellite reception system or similar; the audio communications inside the taxi; images of inside the taxi taken by an on-board camera.

[0020] The alarm may be activated either by an appropriate button or by a spoken command which can be personalized, to prevent false activation or de-activation, by means of a specific function, in addition to those of speech recognition and speaker independence, called speaker verification and speaker dependence. This function, which is able to recognize the driver's voice, provides to acquire, by the on-board terminal, one or more key words which must be spoken by the driver himself when the on-board terminal is set up.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

[0021] These and other characteristics of the invention will be clear from the following description of a preferred form of embodiment, given as a non-restrictive example with the aid of the attached Figure 1, which shows a block diagram of an on-board terminal according to the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERENTIAL EMBODIMENT

[0022] With reference to the attached Figure 1, an on-board terminal 10, according to the invention, to be installed in a taxi, comprises a control unit 11, or processing center, connected to a transceiver unit 12 which in turn, in a conventional manner, is able to receive and transmit information from or to a taxi's remote operational center 13.

[0023] The control unit 11 comprises a microprocessor and is connected to a keyboard or console 14 and a display or monitor 15.

[0024] The control unit 11 is also connected to a voice management unit 16, which comprises a microcontroller 17 inside which there is a speech recognition unit 17a and a text-to-speech unit 17b.

[0025] The microcontroller 17 is connected to a ROM 18 and to a RAM 19.

[0026] The unit 16 also comprises a Digital Sound Processor (DSP) 20, which is connected to a microphone 21 and, by means of an amplifier 22, to a loudspeaker 23.

[0027] We shall now describe some functions which the on-board terminal 10 can perform.

[0028] In the event that the taxi's remote operational center 13 assigns a determined service to a certain taxi, on the basis of its own program, the same remote operational center 13 transmits the data concerning the service, like the address of the client who has requested the service to the selected taxi, e.g. to the free car nearest the client. The control unit 11 of the on-board terminal 10 decodes the message received in digital form and shows it on the display 15; the unit 16 also converts it into a voice message, which the driver listens to.

[0029] To accept or refuse the service requested, the driver can either act on a key or a button on the keyboard 14, or he can speak a particular word, phrase or simple letter of the alphabet.

[0030] After reaching the address and picking up the client, the driver receives from the client the destination address and can communicate it to the taxi's remote operational center 13 either by keying it in on the keyboard 14 or by speaking it into the microphone 21. The on-board terminal 10 in turn speaks the destination address which it has memorized to obtain a confirmation or possible correction.

[0031] The confirmation is supplied by the driver, in this case too either by acting on a key or button on the keyboard 14 or by speaking a particular word, phrase or simple letter of the alphabet. The confirmation enables the terminal 10 to transmit the data to the operational center 13.

[0032] In the same way, the driver can receive any information from the remote operational center 13 or transmit any information thereto. To be more exact, the information received by the driver can be temporarily memori-zed in the RAM 19 to be listened to subsequently, when the driver so requests.

[0033] The driver can also consult, by speaking simple verbal commands, or by keying on the keyboard 14, any information contained in the RAM 19.

[0034] The on-board terminal 10 can also be predisposed with pre-set messages memorized in the RAM 19, which can be selectively sent to the taxi's remote operational center upon a simple request, even only verbal, from the driver.

[0035] The on-board terminal 10 can also be programmed, with instructions resident in the ROM 18, so that, if necessary, that is, if activated by the driver simply by an oral command, or by the remote operational center 13, he can inform the latter of his instantaneous position, acquired for example from a satellite receiver of the GPS type or similar.

[0036] It is clear that modifications and additions can be made to the on-board terminal as described heretofore, but these shall remain within the field and scope of the invention.

[0037] It is also clear that, although the invention has been described with reference to a specific example, a person of skill shall certainly be able to make many other equivalent forms thereof, but these too shall remain within the field and scope of the invention.

Claims

1. On-board terminal for taxis or similar, comprising a transceiver unit (12) able to receive and transmit digital information from and to a remote operational center (13) able to menage any taxi's service like trips or similar, the terminal being characterized in that it comprises at least a text-to-speech unit (17b) able to transform the digital information received from the remote operational center (13) and related to the service assigned to a taxi into speech and to broadcast the information inside the taxi by means of a loudspeaker (23).

2. On-board terminal as in Claim 1, characterized in that between said text-to-speech unit (17b) and said loudspeaker (23) there is a digital sound processor (20).

3. On-board terminal as in Claim 1 or 2, characterized in that it also comprises a speech recognition unit (17a) able to recognize and decode the speaker's voice and to convert it into corresponding digital information.

4. On-board terminal as in Claims 2 and 3, characterized in that a microphone (21) is connected to said speech recognition unit (17a) by means of said digital sound processor (20).

5. On-board terminal as in Claim 1, characterized in that it also comprises alarm means able to transmit to said remote operational center (13) the position of the car in real time, said alarm means being able to be activated by means of a determined verbal command recognized by said speech recognition unit (17a).

6. On-board terminal as in Claim 5, characterized in that said pre-determined verbal command is able to be compared with one or more key words memorized in a memory (19).

7. On-board terminal as in Claim 1, characterized in that it also comprises a control unit (11) with a microprocessor connected to a keyboard (14), to a display (15) and to a voice management unit (16) which comprises said text-to-speech unit (17b).

8. On-board terminal as in Claim 7, characterized in that said voice management unit (16) comprises a microcontroller (17) inside which there is a speech recognition unit (17a) and said text-to-speech unit (17b), said microcontroller (17) being connected to a Read Only Memory (18) and to a Random Access Memory (19).

Drawing