Rental/Car-Share Vehicle Access and Management System and Method

摘要

A rental/car-share (RCS) vehicle access and management system and method, in some embodiments, utilizes barcodes, QR codes (or NFC/RFID), GPS, and a mobile app coupled with a wireless network to enable customers to bypass the reservation desk and pickup and drop off reserved RCS vehicles using a mobile phone, tablet or laptop. The QR code, RFID, or NFC communication with the mobile application allows for identification of the vehicle by a mobile application, which, if authorized, can access the vehicle via a temporary access code issued by remote servers. The remote servers and/or mobile application communicates with a control module that plugs into the on-board diagnostics module of the rental/car-share (RCS) vehicle and includes a host processing unit with a processor, an accelerometer, data storage, a GPS with internal GPS antenna; a wireless modem with internal antenna, and CAN bus transceivers connected with the processor, and a USB programmable interface.

主权项

1. A method of supporting registration of a control module with a rental vehicle to enable a remote computing system to wirelessly communicate instructions to the rental vehicle via the control module, the method comprising:
prior to the control module communicating with the rental vehicle in response to any instructions received by the control module from the remote computing system via cellular communication, a mobile computing device receiving a first identifier via a wireless data capture technique distinct from cellular communication, the first identifier corresponding to a unique identifier of the control module; prior to the control module communicating with the rental vehicle in response to any instructions received by the control module from the remote computing system via cellular communication, the mobile computing device receiving a second identifier via a wireless data capture technique distinct from cellular communication, the second identifier corresponding to a unique identifier of the rental vehicle; the mobile computing device sending the first identifier and the second identifier to the remote computing system for association of the first identifier with the second identifier to register the control module with the rental vehicle within the remote computing system.