Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Vehicle diagnosis or maintenance indication
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-31
2002-06-11
Nguyen, Tan (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Vehicle diagnosis or maintenance indication
C701S029000, C709S200000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06405111
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a system and method for distributed computer automotive service equipment. More specifically, the present invention relates to computerized automotive service equipment wherein different diagnostic or service components communicate with one another over a computer network, such as the Internet. The present invention also relates to a novel computerized automotive service system which utilizes object oriented programming and ISO Standard 8879 communications protocol to decentralize and modularize the software routines that perform the computational, user interface, and other necessary algorithms
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The modern automotive service bay contains numerous expensive pieces of equipment designed to automate servicing of an automobile. Wheel aligners, wheel balancers, engine analyzers, brake testers, hydraulic lifts, and similar devices typically contain microprocessors and/or computers to assist an automotive mechanic in performing various servicing tasks. Exemplary computerized automotive wheel alignment systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,383,370 and 5,208,646, whose teachings and disclosures are incorporated herein by reference.
Historically, such computerized automotive service equipment comprised proprietary, closed computer systems. A manufacturer of such systems would typically spend years developing software. The manufacturer had to customize the software to run on a single dedicated computer, and the resulting product had little or no flexibility to interchange and update different hardware and software elements. Each system ran different software, often on completely different operating systems designed for completely different hardware platforms. Each individual system also was incapable of being conveniently or easily updated. If a new development or improvement occurred, the manufacturer of the individual system typically had to issue an entirely new version release of the software and/or hardware in order to bring that improvement to market. The new release required a complete rewrite. Not only did new versions often take years to complete. It was also so costly to release a new system that, as a practical matter, the manufacturer would have to wait until enough improvements occurred in order to justify the financial burdens of a new version release. This hampered the ability of the end user, the automotive service professional, to bring the latest technological improvements to the customer, the typical car driver.
Furthermore, such prior art automotive service equipment systems were not generally designed to communicate or cooperate with other computers in the service bay and elsewhere. For instance, the wheel aligner computer did not communicate with the engine analyzer computer, and neither communicated with the accounting computer or the intake/reception area computer. One consequence of this is that customer or vehicle owner/identification information had to be entered repeatedly into each piece of automotive service equipment each time the same vehicle was serviced in different parts of the service bay. This redundancy wasted valuable operator time and promoted key-entry errors.
It has been known to design automotive service equipment that sends data through a local area network to a file server, such as a Novell server platform. This, however, limits the information to being stored as files and does not support real-time data flow or a distributed application. An example of such as system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,404,639, dated Sep. 13, 1983. The data retained in such files could only be downloaded and stored on self-contained proprietary platforms. These data-only files, then, did not give the resulting automotive service equipment system the capability of exporting data to a remote location for processing, and then returning the processed data to the original location. They also did not give the resulting system the capability to locate different portions of a single automotive service equipment application on different computers.
The prior art automotive service equipment system computers also did not communicate with any remote offsite computer to submit in real-time the data gathered by the sensors in the course of effecting a service procedure. Hence, it was not possible for sensors to transmit their data in real-time to a remote site for analysis and inspection at that remote site. For instance, in vehicle wheel alignment applications, the wheel alignment sensors that were mounted on the vehicle wheels were capable of transmitting wheel angle data only to the vehicle wheel alignment machine itself. There was no way for an offsite technician and/or an offsite computer to review the data to evaluate whether the alignment angles were within specification. Likewise, there was no way for an onsite technician to present this real-time angle information to an off-site expert for purposes of either troubleshooting problems with the servicing equipment, or for receiving instructions and advice on how to proceed with an alignment procedure.
Moreover, for automotive service equipment that depended on OEM and manufacturer generated specifications, such as vehicle wheel alignment equipment, the danger of obsolescence presented itself every new model year. Isolated, dedicated systems required continual updating of vehicle specifications, usually via CDROM's. Managers of the service bay would have to maintain the most updated specifications available for their computerized automotive service equipment. Otherwise, the service bay might have to turn customers away, or worse, the attendants might service newer vehicles to erroneous specifications. The administrative task of maintaining updated specifications for the computerized equipment was an additional burden on the personnel running the service centers.
PRIOR ART COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES
Two major developments in the computer arts have heretofore not been applied in the field of automotive service equipment. The first of these is Internet-based technologies. The second is object oriented programming. Both will be discussed below in detail to lay the groundwork for the subsequent detailed description of the present invention.
Internet-Based Technologies
Until now, no known automotive service equipment utilized the data transfer capabilities of the Internet. The World Wide Web is one type of network residing on the Internet. It began as an information networking project at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). The World Wide Web is best described as the specific software, protocols, conventions and information that enable hypertext and multimedia publishing of resources on different computers around the world. The popularity of the Internet has provided the computer software industry with many new software applications, yet these by and large have been restricted to home and entertainment use.
Web Browsers
Most commonly, home and entertainment users of the Internet access the Internet through the use of a World Wide Web browser. This Web browser application can easily and seamlessly display text and graphics sent from practically any type of computer system. The information to be displayed is sent to the Web browser on Web “pages.” Web pages are constructed using the syntax and rules defined in the ISO 8879 Standard General Markup Language (SGML) document available from the W
3
Consortium, a group of companies and individuals dedicated to the use and standardization of certain data transmission protocols. This ISO standard is sometimes known as hypertext markup language (HTML), version 3.2, although it has evolved that HTML is both slightly overinclusive and underinclusive of the actual ISO 8879 standard. HTML is a markup language used to create hypertext documents that are not unique to one platform or another. HTML files are ASCII text files with codes embedded (indicated by markup tags) to indicate formatting and hypertext links.
Web Servers
Computer systems that send information to a Web browser are called W
Baird Michael L.
de Belleuille Jean
Gill George M.
Kling, III Michael J.
Rogers Steven W
McDermott & Will & Emery
Nguyen Tan
Snap-On Technologies Inc.
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