WO2008113846A1

WO2008113846A1 - Flash protection

Info

Publication number: WO2008113846A1
Application number: PCT/EP2008/053351
Authority: WO
Inventors: Krister Pettersson
Original assignee: Intermultilock Ab
Priority date: 2007-03-21
Filing date: 2008-03-20
Publication date: 2008-09-25

Abstract

The present invention relates to a device and system for personal protection. The solution provides a possibility to temporarily immobilize an intruder or perpetrator by providing a flash of blinding light, spraying maze or paint, and providing a high volume siren while at the same time acquiring an image using a built in camera and transmitting this to a receiving device directly or indirectly via a mobile phone to a receiver.

Description

FLASH PROTECTION

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a personal protection device and in particular to a handheld portable device for immobilizing, stunning, deterring, and/or identifying a perpetrator, as well as bringing attention to a situation.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In view of the increasingly hardened social climate in society and increased violence risks there has been developed a number of different solutions for increasing the personal safety for persons moving about in high risk areas or high risk situations (such as at night time in areas of cities where not so many people move around). These devices include for instance sirens or small portable maze bottles to be used against any attacker or for getting attention from bystanders and in that way warn off any attacker.

It should be noted that these may not be enough to scare away the attacker, for instance administering the maze requires a degree of aiming and being at the correct distance in order to hit the attacker in such a way as to immobilize him/her. It should also be noted that some of these devices will only operate on one person at the time, again using maze as an example, the bottle might not be big enough to administer maze to more than one person before it will be emptied, also the attackers will be given some time to protect themselves leading to only one or a few of the attackers being immobilized. There is therefore a need for some personal protection device that can be used safely by the operator and at the same time being effective against both one and several attackers at the same time.

The object of the present invention is to overcome these and other drawbacks and provide an effective and safe device.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This is provided with the present invention in a number of aspects wherein a first aspect, a device for personal protection is provided, comprising a handheld portable personal protection device, comprising: a user interface; at least one immobilizing unit; wherein the device is arranged to receive a signal from the user interface for invoking at least one immobilizing unit and characterized in that the immobilizing unit comprise a light emitting device providing a light intensity high enough to at least temporarily impair the vision of a human.

The protection device may further comprise a wireless communication interface and a camera, wherein the device is arranged to acquire at least one image from the camera and transmit the image using the wireless interface to a receiver.

The immobilizing unit (3, 4, 10) may be at least one of sound emitter, paint emitter, and maze emitter.

The wireless communication interface may be arranged to use a wireless communication protocol according to at least one of NMT, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, IEEE 802.1 1 , IEEE 802.15, IEEE 802.16 standard, WiFi, Wimax, and Bluetooth.

The protection device may further comprise a microphone for obtaining sounds in the vicinity of the device and where the device (1 ) is arranged to transmit detected sounds to the receiver.

The protection device may further comprise a positioning unit.

The interface button may comprise a dead-mans handle function.

Another aspect of the present invention, a personal protection system is provided comprising: a protection device comprising a light emitting device, a camera, and a wireless communication unit; a central receiving station; characterized in that the protection device is arranged to communicate with a wireless communication link to transmit signals between the protection device and the central receiving station. The system may further comprise a mobile phone in communication with the protection device and the mobile phone is arranged to transfer signals between the protection device and the central receiving station.

The central receiving station may be at least one of a computer server and a security central.

Yet another aspect of the present invention, a receiving station is provided for receiving a signal from a personal protection device, characterized in that the station is arranged to acquire a distress signal and an image from the protection device and further arranged to respond to the distress signal and store the image in a memory.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS In the following, the invention will be described in a non-limiting way and in more detail with reference to exemplary embodiments illustrated in the enclosed drawings, in which:

Fig. 1 schematically illustrates a device according to the present invention;

Fig. 2 schematically illustrates a network according to the present invention;

Fig. 3 schematically illustrates in a block diagram control components of the device from Fig. 1 ; and

Fig. 4 schematically illustrates one embodiment of the device from Fig. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

In Fig.1 reference numeral 1 generally denote a personal protection device according to the present invention. The device includes a number of different solutions for increasing the safety of the user and these solutions are incorporated into a housing 2. The device 1 is supplied with a flash unit 3 for providing an optical flash and it may also optionally be equipped with a siren 4 (i.e. a loudspeaker or some other unit for generating an acoustic signal). The user interacts with the protection device 1 using one or several user interface buttons 5 and can detect the status of the device 1 looking at an indicator 6 (e.g. to see that the device is on or off and the battery status, for instance a lamp or LED with one or several colors and/or blinking/steady state emitter), The indicator 6 may also comprise an LCD or similar interface for providing information about the device. The indicator may also be used for displaying other information about the status of the device, such as configuration, use history and so on. The device may further optionally be equipped with a camera 7, a microphone 8, and/or a spray nozzle 10. The protection device 1 is operated with a built in power supply, for instance a battery (or batteries) which may be a single charge battery and/or chargeable batteries. Other types of power supplies may be used, e.g. a fuel cell or charge capacitor; or a combination of power supplies may be used. In case the device 1 is arranged to operate using chargeable batteries a battery charging connector 9 may be provided on the device 1 for convenient charging of batteries. The device may be made small enough to be handheld.

The operation of the personal protection device 1 is now going to be discussed. A user of the device 1 being attacked may use the device to temporarily immobilize or stun any attacker using one or several of the built in solutions. For instance the user may use the flash to temporarily blind the attacker(s) while the device 1 takes a picture (or sequence of images, e.g. forming a vide clip of the situation) of the attacker(s) and send the taken image(s) to a receiving device for storage and/or bringing attention to the situation (this procedure will be discussed in more detail in relation to Fig. 2 below). As a further step the user may turn on the siren 4 to obtain attention from bystanders. As a third step the user may use the spray nozzle to administer for instance paint and/or maze. The microphone 8 may be turned on during any of these steps in order to transmit and/or record the voices and sound during the attack. This can be transmitted to the receiving device mentioned above. The use of the device may deter the attacker from completing the attack, for instance a high volume siren can stop the attacker or the knowledge that an image has been taken of the attacker may also deter the attacker. The user may use two different ways of triggering the action of the device:

1. The device can be started by pressing the user interface button 5 and then by pressing it several times within a time limit other functions can be started (or several user interface buttons can be used for different functions).

2. The device may be provided with a dead-mans button, for instance a button that is pressed continuously for not starting the device, but when the button is released the device enters into action. User interface button 5 may be used in this mode for triggering the first action, for instance setting off the flash and subsequent pressing of the button will start other functions of the device. In this way the device can be rapidly used without searching for the button to start the device, in a dangerous situation time is critical and every second not wasted can be of help.

The dead-mans button may be arranged in way so that when the hand of the user grasps 5 around the device, it is pressed and kept in place using a comfortable grip. Subsequent opening and closing of the hand around the device may trigger further functions as discussed under point 2 above.

The flash may comprise one or several light emitting elements, such as a single highly 10 luminous lamp, a plurality of smaller lamps, or a number of semiconductor elements capable of discharging light radiation (visible or non-visible but with energy in the emitted radiation high enough to affect the human eye in order to impair the sight at least temporarily), where the combined light intensity from the one or several light elements is high enough to be at least temporarily dazzling, blinding, or semi-blinding to a person 15 standing a few meters away from the light emitter. The light emitted need to be applied with an intensity high enough and with a suitable duration. This will vary depending on who is subjected to the flash and to the environment in which the flash is set off. The flash may also be used after a first blinding or semi-blinding flash for emitting a flashing light in blinking manner in order to bringing attention to bystanders that something is happening. 20 It can also provide means for more easily finding a person outside lit areas, for instance in a forest, a grove, or in an alley. The blinking light is easy to observe over a larger distance in darkness or not so well lit up areas.

Furthermore, the siren may be used for transmitting sound from a central control 25 operation, e.g. a security central to inform attackers that help is on the way. This can be done for instance by transmitting the voice of an operator working at the security central or a pre recorded voice message stored at the central or in the device itself informing that contact has been made with the central. Additionally, it can also be used to inform that a photo or image sequence (e.g. a video clip) has been acquired and has been transmitted 30 to the central.

Fig. 2 shows an example of how the protection device 1 may be used in a communication network 200. The device 1 shown in Fig. 2 is only shown with some of the functions in order to illustrate this embodiment; the flash 3, the siren 4 and the camera. The network 35 200 comprises the protection device 1 , a communication device 201 , a communication gateway 204, a transport network 206 and a receiving device 208. The device 1 communicates with the external communication device 201 , e.g. a mobile phone, using preferably a wireless link 202 (however, a wired link may be used as an alternative). The communication device communicates with the communication gateway 204 using any suitable wireless communication link 203, such as, but not limited to NMT, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, or any other longer range communication interface. However, it should be appreciated that a shorter range wireless communication interface may be used as long as the infrastructure can, to a certain degree, guarantee coverage in most areas, for instance a WLAN or WPAN solution may be used if there is enough coverage. The gateway 204 in turn forwards communication data to a receiving device 208 via one or several communication links 205, 207 and a transport network 206.

The receiving device or station 208 may be located at a security or control central and arranged to indicate to an operator or some control device at the central that there is a need for action or surveillance in order to protect and/or assist the user of the protection device 1. The receiving device 208 is arranged to receive a distress signal and an image from the protection device and is equipped with a storage solution, preferably a nonvolatile memory, such as a hard disk for storage of the image and any other data of importance in investigating the situation at a later stage; these data may for instance include: identity of user and/or identity of protection device, time, location data, acquired sound data, and response triggered from the receiving device.

Fig. 3 shows an example of control units in the device of Fig. 1. A housing 2 protects and encloses the control units and components 301-307 of the device 1. A computational unit 302, such as a microprocessor, FPGA, ASIC, or similar, may control at least part of the operational functions of the device 1. The computational unit 301 may be arranged to receive command signals from the user interface 5 and respond in an appropriate manner on these signals. Some examples of responses will be discussed further below in relation to the operation of the device 1. A memory unit 302 may be provided to at least temporarily store information for the computational unit, for instance information relating to images taken with the camera 7, control information of the computational unit 301 , or information received or sent or to be sent over the communication link 202. This information could be stored in a coded form along with positional data and sound recordings to be used by the police to track a person's movement and condition. The protection device may be provided with a built in positioning unit (not shown), e.g. a GPS unit or the system can be adapted to retrieve information from communication infrastructure parts for determining the position of the device (for example in mobile phone communication networks it is possible to obtain information about which base station or similar the device is connected to, or even using triangulation information from several base stations in communicative range from the device to pin point the location to a better precision). Interface control modules may be provided for different hardware interfaces such as a control interface 303 for the user interface, a camera interface unit 304, or spray nozzle interface (not shown). The device further comprises a battery 306 with or without charge control. A power connector 9 provides electrical power to the battery during charging. Other interface units (not shown) may include microphone interface, siren interface, flash interface, LED interface (or for other interface solution) and so on depending on functions of the device 1.

The device 1 may also have a configuration interface (not shown) where it is possible to program the device 1 with configuration data for determining for instance how and where data transmitted from the device shall be transmitted, an address to the central receiving device, communication protocol to use (for instance depending on type and brand of mobile phone), who owns the device, and/or identity of the device. The interface may comprise for instance a wireless communication interface using the connection to the mobile phone, a slot for a removable memory media (e.g. a memory stick, flash disc, or any other suitable non-volatile memory unit) which can be read by the computation unit (301 ), a connector for connecting an external programming device (such as a link to a PC: e.g. a USB connection), or a receiving slot internally of the device for receiving a memory module (such as a ROM module: e.g. a PROM, EPROM, EEPROM or similar integrated circuit device).

A communication interface unit 305 with an antenna 307 communicates wirelessly with external devices or directly with the gateway 204 (through for instance a built in mobile phone unit (GSM, GPRS, UMTS, WLAN, WPAN or similar) or any other suitable wireless communication unit). The external device may be for instance a mobile phone 201 and the protection device 1 may communicate with the mobile phone using any suitable wireless communication method and protocol, such as according to the Bluetooth standard, WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) protocols (e.g. IEEE 802.1 1 , 802.15, and 802.16 series of protocols), or other WPAN protocols (Wireless Personal Area Networks).

The protection device 200 may also be provided with a location detector (not shown) such as a GPS solution or the system may use any such functionality in the mobile phone if present. The base station or any other communication gateway 204 can also be used for determining approximate geographical coordinates.

The device is arranged mechanically in a way so that it fits comfortable in a human hand.

Fig. 4 shows an example of how the device 1 may be used by a user. It may be located in the palm 401 of the hand of the user and optionally fixed to the hand by one or more straps 402 and 403. However, it should be appreciated that the device 1 may be worn by the user in other ways, for instance hanging from the neck on the chest in a strap, using a clip to secure the device 1 to a suitable piece of clothing, e.g. on a jacket or in a belt.

The device 1 may comprise further functions for increased functionality such as a sensor for determining the horizontal position of the person for providing a "man down" alarm, i.e. the device can send an alarm signal to the receiving station if the person (or the device) has a position lower than 60 degrees or similar (e.g. lying substantially flat parallel to the ground = 0 degrees if parallel to ground is defined as 0 degrees). The device may also comprise a pull alarm, i.e. if the device 1 is snatched by a perpetrator from the user, an acceleration sensor (accelerometer, not shown) or a sensor connection (not shown) to one of the holding straps 402 or 403 will provide a signal to the computational unit 201 to send a signal to the receiving station about this event. An acceleration unit (not shown) may also be used to detect if the device has not moved in certain time (absence of motion) and if so, send a signal to the receiving station because this could mean that the user is immobilized or is ill/hurt and need help.

It should be noted that the word "comprising" does not exclude the presence of other elements or steps than those listed and the words "a" or "an" preceding an element do not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements. It should further be noted that any reference signs do not limit the scope of the claims, and that several "means", "devices", and "units" may be represented by the same item of hard-ware. Directions and angles are provided as a guide to understanding and it should be understood that the invention is not limited by this since these depend on the point of reference chosen.

The above mentioned and described embodiments are only given as examples and should not be limiting to the present invention. Other solutions, uses, objectives, and functions within the scope of the invention as claimed in the below described patent claims should be apparent for the person skilled in the art. DEFINITIONS AND ACRONYMS

WLAN Wireless Local Area Network

WPAN Wireless Personal Area Network GSM Global System for Mobile communication

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

NMT Nordic Mobile Telephone

UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

GPS Global positioning system IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Claims

1. A handheld portable personal protection device (1 ), comprising: a user interface (5); at least one immobilizing unit (3, 4, 10); wherein the device (1 ) is arranged to receive a signal from the user interface for invoking at least one immobilizing unit and characterized in that the immobilizing unit comprise a light emitting device (3) providing a light intensity high enough to at least temporarily impair the vision of a human and that the signal is received by operation of a dead-mans button (5) on the device.

2. The protection device according to claim 1 , further comprising a wireless communication interface (305) and a camera (7), wherein the device is arranged to acquire at least one image from the camera and transmit the image using the wireless interface to a receiver.

3. The protection device according to claim 1 , wherein the immobilizing unit (3, 4, 10) is at least one of sound emitter, and maze emitter.

4. The protection device according to claim 1 , wherein the immobilizer unit (3, 4, 10) is a paint emitter.

5. The protection device according to claim 1 , wherein the wireless communication interface is arranged to use a wireless communication protocol according to at least one of NMT, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, IEEE 802.11 , IEEE 802.15, IEEE 802.16 standard, WiFi, Wimax, and Bluetooth.

6. The protection device according to any of above claims, further comprising a microphone for obtaining sounds in the vicinity of the device and where the device (1 ) is arranged to transmit detected sounds to the receiver.

7. The protection device according to claim 1 , further comprising a positioning unit.

8. A personal protection system (200) comprising: a protection device comprising a light emitting device (3), a camera, and a wireless communication unit; a central receiving station; characterized in that the protection device (1 ) is arranged to communicate with a wireless communication link (202) to transmit signals between the protection device (1 ) and the central receiving station and where the device (3) is arranged to trigger a flash with a light intensity high enough to at least temporarily impair the vision of a human on operation of a dead-mans button (5) on the device.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein the system further comprise a mobile phone in communication with the protection device and the mobile phone is arranged to transfer signals between the protection device and the central receiving station.

10. The system according to claim 8, wherein the central receiving station is at least one of a computer server and a security central.

1 1. A receiving station (208) for receiving a signal from a personal protection device (1 ), characterized in that the station is arranged to acquire a distress signal and an image from the protection device (1 ) and further arranged to respond to the distress signal and store the image in a memory.