JP2006093782A - Remote operation system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a new remote operation system in which the matter of operational butting between remote operation and direct operation can be previously solved. <P>SOLUTION: The remote operation system comprises a portable telephone 5, a home gateway 15, and an photography instrument 31 arranged in a home. At steps S1, S2 and S3, the portable telephone 5, the home gateway 15, and the photography instrument 31 are actuated, respectively. Subsequently, the home gateway 15 requests image transmission for the photography instrument 31 (step S4) and an image is transmitted in response to the request (step S5). When the portable telephone 5 accesses the home gateway 15 (step S6), the operation advances to step S8 along the route of access is present at step S7, and the home gateway 15 transmits an image acquired at the above-mentioned step to the portable telephone 5. When it is transmitted (step S9), the image is displayed on a display (step S10), and a user checks the image and provides a material for making a decision whether it must be dealt with or not. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a remote operation system, and more particularly to a remote operation system for operating home appliances and the like installed in a building by a portable terminal.

  2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, with the spread of broadband, home appliance network systems that perform overall control by connecting home appliances via a network in the home have been proposed. On the other hand, the development of wireless communication technology using mobile terminals such as mobile phones is also remarkable. Therefore, a technique for remotely controlling home appliances in the home using a mobile phone has also been proposed.

  For example, Patent Document 1 describes a home electronics system that displays on a control terminal the state of a device to be controlled. The state displayed on the control terminal is shown in FIG. As shown in FIG. 11, when the user wants to know the state in the home, an operation to that effect is performed, and a display related to home lighting is made on the display unit 203 of the control terminal 201. As shown in FIG. 11, it is displayed that the living room on the first floor is off, the kitchen is off, and the entrance is on. The user can know the state in the home from the display shown in FIG. 11 and can turn off the remote operation of the home appliance, for example, the illumination of the entrance.

JP 2001-309455 A

  In the above-mentioned Patent Document 1, it is possible for the user to know the situation in the home. However, there are actually the following problems. First, when there is a family or the like in the house, there is a possibility that the user's remote operation and the family's operation are mixed and a problem arises. For example, when a user reserves a program for a video recorder from a mobile terminal, if another family makes a recording reservation for another program at the same time, or the video recorder stores the video recorder according to the user's reservation. A problem arises when a family reserves another program when there is almost no remaining capacity.

  Furthermore, an unexpected (problem) situation may occur for a family in the house due to a user's remote operation. For example, when the curtains are opened by remote control while the family is changing clothes, when it is impossible to enter the house because it is locked during garden work, and when the bath is further divided during bathing, there are problems.

  It is an object of the present invention to provide a new remote operation system that can solve the above-described problems related to the batting of the remote operation and the direct operation.

  The remote operation system according to the present invention detects whether there is a person in the house or in the garden, and if there is a person, an operation that has already been reserved or is about to be reserved. If there is a possibility that the detection result may cause a problem with the currently reserved operation due to the remote operation, the user who performs the remote operation is notified, and the user performs the remote operation based on this notification. Information for taking necessary measures such as changes can be obtained.

  When the remote operation and the operation of the user in the house are or are likely to be batting, the material for determining how to perform the remote operation is presented, so it is possible to navigate the remote operator It is possible to avoid butting related to operations with other users.

  Hereinafter, a remote control system according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. In this specification, “apparatus management device” refers to a home server, a router or the like when used in a company, and is generally referred to as a home gateway device when used at home. Further, in the following embodiments, the human being is described as an example of the detection target, but the “object” described in the claims is a generic term for a wide concept including various objects such as pets and cars. It is intended to include these.

  First, the principle diagram of the remote control system will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in FIG. 1, a remote control system 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a network 3 and a mobile phone 5 that can communicate with the network 3 via, for example, a base station 11. A portable telephone 5 that can be carried and operated remotely, a home gateway 15 that is disposed in the building (house) H1 and is connected to the network 3, and various home appliances that are connected by LAN, for example, between the home gateway 15 Equipment. In FIG. 1, as various home appliances, a video recorder 17, a curtain or door 21, a lighting 23, and a bath 25 are exemplarily shown. These are examples in which the remote operation and the person in the home or the operation thereof are easy to batting. The user 7 can perform remote operation related to home appliances and the like in the home from the mobile phone 5, but the feature of the remote operation system according to the present embodiment is that the user 7 can indirectly operate in the home through the state of the home appliance. It is to provide a mechanism that can check the state. This mechanism will be described below as the present embodiment with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an overview of the remote control system according to the first embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 2, the remote control system according to the present embodiment has a user 1 who has a mobile phone 5 and a home network HM1 connected via a network 3. The home network HM1 includes a photographing device 31 and one or more operated devices 33 connected to each other by a LAN network with the home gateway 15 as a base point.

  In the example shown in FIG. 2, for example, the user 1 arrives at home from the outside, so that the controlled device, for example, the air conditioner 33 is switched on to the home gateway 15 via the network 3 by the mobile phone 5. to access. At this time, the state of the air conditioner 33 is normally displayed. With reference to this, the switch of the air conditioner 33 is turned on to set the temperature.

  However, in the case where the user 2 exists in the house and draws a picture (35), when the photographing device 31 detects the presence of the user 2 who is drawing a picture, the home gateway 15 (L1) is detected. Then, the user 1 is notified via the network 3 (L2, L3). The user 1 who has received the notification can check the state of the user 2 displayed on the display device 5a of the mobile phone 5 (FIG. 3A). The user 1 sees this video and turns on the air conditioner or sets the temperature. The user 1 may go against the intention of the user 2, so the user 1 returns home without doing anything.

  FIG. 3B is a functional block diagram illustrating a configuration example of the mobile phone 5. As shown in FIG. 3B, the cellular phone 5 includes a control unit 231, each unit controlled by the control unit 231, a storage memory 232, a key input unit 5b, a display unit 5a, and a speaker. 114, a microphone 124, an audio output unit 123, a wireless unit 238 including an antenna 111, a camera 112, and a light 113.

  The control unit 231 is provided with a change information display control unit 231a. The change information display control unit 231a performs control to display a situation related to the event based on a notification made through the home gateway 15 in response to the occurrence of a certain event, such as when the presence of the user 2 is detected. Do. Accordingly, when the presence of the user 2 is detected and the fact is notified, the status is displayed on the display unit, so that the user 1 can obtain information for making a change regarding the setting.

  FIG. 4 is a state transition diagram showing a processing flow of the remote operation technique according to the present embodiment. Examples of the subject include a mobile phone 5, a home gateway 15, and a photographing device 31 installed in the house. First, in steps S1, S2, and S3, each of the mobile phone 5, the home gateway 15, and the photographing device 31 is activated. Next, in step S4, the home gateway 15 makes an image transmission request to the photographing apparatus 31, and transmits an image in response to this (step S5). In step S6, when the mobile phone 5 accesses the home gateway 15, the process proceeds to step S8 along the route with access in step S7, and the home gateway 15 transmits the image acquired in the above step to the mobile phone 5. . When transmitted (step S9), the image is displayed on the display device 5a of the portable terminal 5 (step S10), and the user 1 confirms the image displayed on the display device 5a to determine whether any action is necessary. . The mobile phone 5 and the home gateway 15 return to the steady states S11 and S12, respectively.

  In this event, for example, as described above, the user 2 can open the curtain while changing clothes, be locked while working in the garden, or further raise the bath temperature during bathing. The situation can be considered.

  Next, a remote operation system according to a modification of the present embodiment will be described. In this modification, the controlled device is, for example, a video recorder, and the case where the user 1 makes a program reservation by remote operation will be described as an example. When the user 1 reserves a program of a certain channel, if the user 2 directly reserves another channel in the same time zone, the reservation is shared. In such a case, when it is detected that the reservation has been made, the video recorder notifies the cellular phone 5 of the user 1 via the gateway 15 and the network 3 via the LAN. Based on this notification, the user 1 can see that the reservation is shared by looking at the display unit 5a of the mobile phone 5. Then, the user 1 can take some measures. User 1 measures include canceling the reservation, contacting user 2 to make adjustments for overlapping reservations, and having user 2 cancel the reservation. Thereby, even if there is a reservation, it can be an opportunity to take some countermeasures.

  Next, a remote control system according to a second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of the remote control system according to the present embodiment. As shown in FIG. 5, the remote control system according to the present embodiment has a user 1 who owns a mobile phone 5 and a home network HM 2 connected via a network 3. The home network HM2 includes a presence / absence determination system 51 that is connected to a home gateway 15 by a LAN network in a house, and one or more operated devices 33.

  The presence / absence determination system 51 is, for example, a moving direction detection system 53 including an RFID sensor 55 including an RFID 57. By providing two RFID 57 sets 53a that are continuous in the direction in which people enter and exit at the entrance of the house, it is possible to detect the entry and exit of people. Depending on the order in which the two tags detect a person, it is possible to distinguish between when a person leaves the house and when the person enters.

  Hereinafter, the operation of the remote control system according to this embodiment will be described. First, the user 2 returns home. The RFID sensor 55 uses the moving direction detection system 51 to detect that the user 2 holding the RFID has moved from the outside toward the house. The moving direction detection system 51 is a portable terminal 5 of the user 1 via the RFID sensor 55 and the home gateway 15 (L1) and via the network 3 (L2, L3), and includes a display device 5a and an operation terminal 5b. Notification that the mobile terminal 5 has returned home is made.

  In response to this notification, the user 1 operates the operation terminal (operation unit) 5b while viewing the notification content displayed on the display device 5a of the portable terminal 5, and accesses the home gateway 15 via the network 3 (L4). (L5), you can know the state of the house. FIG. 6 is a display example shown on the display unit 5 a of the mobile terminal 5. As shown in FIG. 6, the user 1 can know that the user 2 is in the house, that the person is at home, and that the lighting is turned on.

  In this case, the device 2 to be operated, for example, whether the lighting state in the house is on or off and whether there is a person in the house or not is acquired. Since it is in the house, it can be determined that it is not necessary to turn off the light (L6). If there is no person in the house, it is determined to turn off the illumination, and an instruction to turn off the illumination is actually given from the operation unit 5b.

  As described above, according to the remote operation system according to the present embodiment, the entry / exit of the house is detected based on the relationship between the RFID sensor provided at the entrance of the house and the RFID possessed by the user 2, and this is transmitted to the user 1 who is remote. By notifying, the user 1 can determine whether or not another user (in this case, the user 2) is in the house, and should be used as a material for determining whether or not the lighting needs to be turned off. And an operation can be performed based on this determination.

  Next, a remote control system according to a third embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a remote control system according to the present embodiment. As shown in FIG. 7, the remote control system according to the present embodiment has a user 1 who owns a mobile phone 5 and a home network HM 3 connected via a network 3. The home network HM3 has a history analysis device 71 and one or more operated devices 33 connected to each other by a LAN network in the house with the home gateway 15 as a base point.

  The history analysis device 71 is associated with a history memory 73 that stores a history of operation or remote operation commands including the controlled device 33 in the house. The operating device 33 is connected to the network. For example, the history analysis apparatus records a daily action history for each user, and sequentially records time and action for each unique ID stored in the user's RFID.

  For example, the user 1 goes out with the portable terminal 5 after turning off the lighting device 75. At this time, a record that the user 1 has turned off the lighting device 75 is left in the history memory 73 via the history analysis device 71. After that, when the user 2 returns home and the home gateway 15 detects that the lamp 77 is turned on with the lighting device 75 attached, the history is stored in the history memory 73 and the user 2 illuminates the user 1. Notify that the appliance 75 has been turned on. A display example on the display unit 5a of the mobile terminal 5 of the user 1 who has received this notification is shown in FIG.

  As shown in FIG. 8, the display unit 5a of the portable terminal 5 has a history 1: lighting fixture off, history 2: lighting fixture on history based on the storage of the history memory 73 as the on / off history of the lighting fixture 75. Will be notified and displayed via the network. By viewing this display, the user 1 can confirm that the user has surely turned off the lighting fixture, and the user 2 has turned on the lighting fixture, so that the home lighting is now turned on. I can know that. Even when the house approaches when returning home, the user 1 can know that it is not necessary to turn on the lighting device 75. Alternatively, when the bath is boiled, it is possible to prevent the user 1 from boiling the bath further by knowing that the user 2 is already in the bath by lighting the bath.

  As described above, according to the remote operation system according to the present embodiment, the history memory for storing the operation history of the operated device and the like related to the house and the history analysis device for managing and analyzing the history are provided. In particular, there is an advantage that knowledge on how to do it can be obtained even when there is no photographed image by a photographing device or the like.

  Next, a remote control system according to a fourth embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a remote control system according to the present embodiment. As shown in FIG. 9, the remote control system according to the present embodiment includes a user 1 who has a mobile phone 5 and a home network HM4 connected via a network 3. The home network HM4 includes a history analysis device 81 connected by a LAN network with the home gateway 15 as a base point in the house, and one or more operated devices 33. The history analysis device 81 has a history memory 83 for storing history, and an electronic lock 85 provided at the entrance associated with the history memory 83.

  For example, the user 1 goes out after locking the electronic lock. The history memory 83 records that the user 1 has locked the key. Thereafter, the user 2 comes home and opens the key. At this time, the fact that the key is locked is recorded in the history memory 83, and the history analyzing apparatus detects that there is a person at home. FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating a display example on the display screen 5 a of the mobile phone 5 possessed by the user 1. It is displayed that the user 2 has locked the key in the history 1, that the user 2 has locked the key, and that the user 2 is in the house (they have not gone out after entering). By being notified of this display, the user 1 can know that it is not necessary to turn off the light because the user 2 is in the house even if the light is on. Alternatively, you can check that you are working out of the garden from another door. If the user closes the key while working in the garden, the user 2 may not be able to enter the house from the garden, so this state can be prevented.

  As described above, according to the remote operation system according to the present embodiment, the means for detecting the situation in the house, the means for notifying the user who performs the remote operation of the outside of the house according to the detection, and the notified information A means for the user to confirm and a means for the user to perform a remote operation based on the confirmation result, so that when the remote operation and the operation of the user in the house are batting, the remote operation is performed Therefore, the remote operator can be navigated.

  In the present embodiment, the operation of home appliances in the house has been described as an example, but the present invention can also be applied to remote operation of devices such as offices. Further, although RFID has been described as an example of an inexpensive sensor, other sensors may be used.

  The present invention can be applied to a remote operation system such as a digital home appliance.

It is a principle figure of the remote control system of this invention. It is a figure which shows the outline | summary of the remote control system by the 1st Embodiment of this invention. FIG. 3A is a front view of the mobile phone according to the present embodiment. FIG. 3B is a functional block diagram illustrating a configuration example of the mobile phone. It is a state transition diagram which shows the flow of a process of the remote operation technique by this Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the example of 1 structure of the remote control system by the 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of a display shown on the display part of the portable terminal by this Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the example of 1 structure of the remote control system by the 3rd Embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of a display in the display part of the user's portable terminal which received notification. It is a figure which shows the example of 1 structure of the remote control system by the 4th Embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of a display in the display screen of the mobile telephone which a user has. It is a figure which shows the example of the home electronics system described in patent document 1, and displays the state of the apparatus used as control object on a control terminal.

Explanation of symbols

H1 ... Home network, 1 ... Remote operation system, 3 ... Network network, 5 ... Mobile terminal, 7 ... User, 11 ... Base station, 15 ... Home gateway (device management device), 17 ... Video recorder, 21 ... Curtain or door , 23 ... lighting, 25 ... bath.

Claims (9)

A portable terminal having a device control function by remote operation;
A controlled device arranged in a building and controlled by the mobile terminal via a first network, and a device management device connected to the controlled device by a second network, the controlled device side A remote operation system comprising: a device that includes a detection unit that detects a change in status and a notification unit that notifies the mobile terminal of the detection in response to detection by the detection unit.   The remote operation system according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit includes a photographing device that photographs the controlled device.   The remote operation system according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit includes a sensor that detects an entry / exit of an object to / from the building.   The detection unit includes at least one of a first sensor that detects an entry / exit of an object to / from the building or a second sensor that detects an operation of the controlled device, and at least one of the first and second sensors. The remote control system according to any one of claims 1 to 3, further comprising: a history memory that stores a detection history by any one of them.   The remote operation system according to claim 4, wherein the sensor detects on / off of an electronic lock provided in a building.   A portable terminal having a remote operation function for controlling a device by remote operation, and receiving the notification of the change information regarding the change in the situation on the controlled device side controlled by the portable terminal via the first network A portable terminal comprising a change information display control unit that performs control to display a message.   A device management apparatus connected by a network to a controlled apparatus controlled by remote operation, a detection unit for detecting a change in the status of the controlled apparatus side, and the mobile terminal in response to detection by the detection unit A device management apparatus comprising: a notification unit that notifies the effect. Monitoring changes in information about remotely controlled devices;
Notifying that there has been a change to a control device that controls the controlled device by remote operation when there is a change in the information; and
And a step of performing a remote operation from the control device that has been notified of a necessary operation in association with the change.   A program for causing a computer to execute the steps according to claim 8.

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