摘要 |
The present invention generally relates to key assemblies and methods thereof for direct and remote control of operations of various devices including vehicles such as, e.g., automobiles or other land vehicles. More particularly, the present invention relates to a key assembly and related methods provided with a direct mechanism to directly lock and unlock a doors of a vehicle as well as a remote mechanism to lock and unlock the same door. Each of the direct and remote mechanisms is spatially disposed with respect to the other mechanism and/or operatively coupled to the other mechanism in order not to interfere the operation of the other mechanism and/or in order to reduce a characteristic dimension of such a key assembly. The key assemblies and related methods of this invention can be applied to any device of which the operations can be controlled by two or more different mechanisms, where one of such mechanisms may require a close disposition or a direct contact with the device for intended operations, while the other of such mechanisms does not require such a close disposition or direct contact for the same or similar intended operations.
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