Method of providing a car pooling assistance through a wireless communication system

摘要

The invention relates to a method which receives location information of a mobile terminal of a single user. One or more journeys are extracted from the location information of the single user. The corresponding journey data is stored in a journey database. From the journey data in the journey database, journey patterns for the single user are extracted. A journey pattern indicates at least the regularity of a particular journey in time, i.e. over a number of days. The journey patterns are stored in the pattern database. The journey patterns of the single user are matched with patterns of other users. If a match is found, at least one match based on the journey patterns is sent to the single user. These features enable the carpool service to find a match which takes into account the regularity across a period of days. By identifying the regularity, a better match can be made with users which travel the same route, as also the days on which the users travel are taken into account.

主权项

1. A method of providing a car pooling assistance through a carpool system in a wireless communication system; the method comprising:
receiving location information of a mobile communications device which is mobile with a first user both in vehicular and pedestrian journeys; determining non-traveling upon receipt of consecutive location information having a same location; storing a journey record in a journey database if a period of non-traveling exceeds a preset time; identifying similar journey records for the first user, the similar journey records having similar start and end locations and similar start and end times, but on different days; determining a match between the similar journey records of different days and a repetition pattern; upon determining the match between the similar journey records, storing a journey pattern record for the first user in a pattern database; and determining if the journey pattern record of the first user matches with a journey pattern record of another user; using journey pattern rules to determine whether a journey pattern type of the first user matches a journey pattern type of the another user, a match of journey pattern types being determined when one of the journey pattern types is a subset of the other journey pattern type, each journey pattern type having a different frequency, thereby enabling determining the match with users that travel less or more frequently along a same route.