Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Vehicle diagnosis or maintenance indication
Reexamination Certificate
2002-03-13
2003-12-09
Cuchlinski, Jr., William A. (Department: 3663)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Vehicle diagnosis or maintenance indication
C340S933000, C340S938000, C340S457000, C342S357490, C342S457000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06662090
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a preventive maintenance service system, in which an alarm is raised when the time of replacement of an inspection required part is approaching by determining the condition of degradation of the inspection required part used for a vehicle on the basis of the service life of a vehicle part, and the information on the vehicle part condition by a part condition sensor and the environment information of the vehicle in service, which are collected at a center.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The development of automobile industry has brought a motorized society, in which the roads are full of vehicles. If they are not maintained well, these vehicles encounter abnormalities, causing a failure to end up with a serious accident in an extreme case. So the law requires the owner of a vehicle maintenance and inspection, and receiving the automobile inspection certificate issued by the land transportation bureau every two years, and the regular inspections such as 3 and 6-month inspections.
However, a vehicle once purchased will be in service for a long time period and the parts mounted on the vehicle are continuously in operation, while most of the parts are expendables and have the limits of service life. These vehicle parts are categorized as one group whose failures don't affect the vehicle operation and the other group whose failures affect it adversely. The latter group of parts needs to be replaced before a failure occurs.
The inspection of vehicle parts has been normally conducted hitherto when a regular inspection and the subsequent legal inspection are performed for receiving the automobile inspection certificate issued by the land transportation bureau. However, the parts have been actually replaced when a failure occurs, for the recent parts of vehicle are of excellent performance and rarely encounter failures. It is hard to find the degradation of vehicle parts by the appearance and the degradation sometimes develops faster depending on the frequency in use of a part. Once a failure occurs, it will result in a difficult situation to drive, since a repair such as replacement of parts is usually mandatory to put a vehicle into service again.
Vehicle parts will degrade by secular change even if a vehicle is kept unused and the speed of degradation of a part varies with the environment of a vehicle in service (heavy snowfall district, coastal district) for the vehicles of the same type. Therefore, there has been a problem that a vehicle cannot be driven in the constantly stable conditions, since the maintenance with sufficient care is not able to be performed by only having an inspection of vehicle parts at receiving an automobile inspection certificate or a legal inspection.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
One of the objects of the present invention is to provide a protective maintenance service system capable of raising an alarm for the replacement of a part when the degradation of an inspection required part reaches the prescribed criteria of replacement. In the system, the condition of degradation of the inspection required part is determined by the service life of the inspection required part used for a vehicle and the information on the vehicle part condition obtained by a part condition sensor, or by the environment of a vehicle in service, the road environment and the mileage, considering the service life of vehicle part.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a protective maintenance service system capable of transmitting the expected time of part replacement regularly by predicting the time of part replacement when an inspection required part reaches the prescribed criteria. In the system, the condition of degradation of the inspection required part is determined by the service life of the inspection required part used for a vehicle and the information on the vehicle part condition obtained by the part condition sensor, or by the environment of a vehicle in service, the road environment and the mileage, considering the service life of vehicle part. In addition, the degradation development of the inspection required part is predicted with the mileage per time in the past and the conditions of the vehicle in service.
One feature of the present invention provides a protective maintenance service system for vehicles by a service provider, with which a business unit that controls a plurality of vehicles makes a contract of protective maintenance service for monitoring conditions of inspection required parts of the respective vehicles that are under the control of the business unit, wherein of the respective inspection required parts stored in a vehicle inspection parts database for the respective vehicles, which are provided by the business unit in advance and stored in a vehicle database, when a time of part replacement is approaching, an alarm is raised for a part having a part condition sensor according to the data detected by the part condition sensor, and for a part without a part condition sensor according to a service life compensated with an actual service environment.
Another feature of the present invention provides a protective maintenance service system for vehicles by a service provider, with which a business unit that controls a plurality of vehicles makes a contract of protective maintenance service for monitoring conditions of inspection required parts of the respective vehicles that are under the control of the business unit, wherein of the respective inspection required parts stored in a vehicle inspection parts database for the respective vehicles, which are provided by the business unit in advance and stored in a vehicle database, an expected time of part replacement is supplied for a part having a part condition sensor by computing the expected time of part replacement with the change of an inspection required part per time and the degree of degradation development of th e inspection required part, which is computed with the change of the inspection required part per time detected by the part condition sensor and a mileage per time in the past, and for a part without a part condition sensor by computing an expected time of part replacement with a service life compensated with an actual service environment.
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Ito Akio
Manaka Toshio
Nakahara Takashi
Toyama Atsuya
Yoshioka Tatsuo
Cuchlinski Jr. William A.
Hogan & Hartson LLP
To Tuan C
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