Field of Invention The present invention relates to the field of audit trail and monitoring in general and more particularly using an audit trail apparatus for automating the audit trail and monitoring system.

Background of Invention

There are many non-personal owned vehicles on the roads nowadays. These vehicles maybe those owned by public tranport companies, freight fleet companies or government bodies and examples of these vehicles are taxis, buses, trucks or patrol cars. For various reasons, the need for vehicle recording device and auto-vehicle recording for these types of motor vehicles have increased.

Vehicle recording devices are useful for a variety of applications pertaining to both operator and vehicle communication and control. In regard to the vehicle operator, the vehicle recording device may be used to log and report such items as the operator's driving time, trip time, electronic vehicle controller faults and other operating

information. In regard to the vehicle itself, the recording device may be used to record fuel efficiency on a trip-by-trip basis, engine operating parameters and other related information. This information may be subsequently analyzed by a vehicle technician or vehicle owner for maintenance purposes.

Additionally, the information may be used in a business delivery environment by the operator's manager to optimize driver efficiency and performance, and to track deliveries made by the vehicle over a given period of time. Or in instances of government owned vehicles, it provides the posibility of ensuring that there is no abuse or misuse of government owned vehicles. Apart from data such as speed and location of a vehicle, there is a need for audio visual data of a vehicle at a given time to be obtained. These data provide much more insight than data such as speed, especially in an investigation. Visual info such as the position of a vehicle at a point of impact during an accident is vital.

Therefore there is a need for a vehicle recording system that is able to process the information obtained by a vehicle recording device.

Summary of Invention

It is also an objective of the present invention to provide for an audit trail system and monitoring system, which is able to transmit wireless time tagged information to a remote location. Description of Drawings

Figure 1 Audit trail apparatus on a car

Figure 2 Overview of Audit Trail and Monitoring System

Detailed Description

The present invention will now be detailed with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which exemplary embodiments of the invention are shown. The invention may, however be embodied in other different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments discussed herein, rather these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will convey the concept of the invention to those skilled in the art. In the following description of the present invention, known methods and functions will be omitted as it would be already known to those skilled in the art. The imaging deviceof the present invention is described in brief below and is described in further detail in co-owned and co-pending Malaysian application no. PI (to be furnished once made available). The imaging device comprises of a camera, a wide-angle lens, a reflective means, an illumination means and an audio acquisition means.

The entire imaging device arrangement as can be seen in Figure 1 is mounted on a horizontal plane parallel to the ground, such as the car roof.

The Audit Trail and Monitoring System comprises of the imaging device and an audio visual processing device.

The audio visual processing device is a dual function device i.e. it is a

a. Black box - stores data such as the speed and co-ordinates of the car in real time.

b. Information transmitter - transmits real time data such as the speed and co-ordinates of the car to a remote command center via 3G applications or

GPRS.

The operations of audio visual processing device will be described in detail below. An overview of the audio visual processing device can be seen as illustrated in Figure 3. The device is divided into several blocks of functions. The functions of each block will now be discussed in detail.

Block A Audio signals are acquired from the Imaging device. The audio outputs are multiplexed using a microphone multiplexer (A l). The output of this multiplexer is a time multiplexed serial output, where each microphone in the microphone array will be allocated a slot in time.

The multiplexed audio signal is then fed into a Signal Receiver (A2), where the multiplexed audio signal is digitized. The audio signal then will go through a sampler and hold circuit and digitizer. The output of Signal Receiver (A2) is then fed into an Audio Compressor (A6) for recording purposes. The output is also fed into a Max amplitude detector (A3). In the Max amplitude detector (A3), the serial audio signals are . compared to extract the audio signal that has the highest amplitude.

The highest amplitude and hence the source point of the sound is calculated as shown in the example below:

.

Let take the two highest amplitude, say between angle X and angle Y, amplitude for X is Ax and Amplitude of Y is Ay and the separation angle between X and Y is (Y-X), the angle calculation should be like this: Detected angle: X + (Ax/(Ax+ Ay) * (Y-X))

The microphone that has been determined as the source of the sound is the referred to Direction Reference (A4) to extract the angle information i.e. the displacement angle from the reference angle, that would be fed to the Audio-Video Fusion unit (A5).

Block B

The video output from the Imaging device is fed to the Video Splitter (Bl). The output of the Video Splitter is fed into two other components. First the output is fed to the Panoramic Image Transformation (B2). The output signal from Video Splitter is also fed into the video compression unite (B5) for recording preparation. The output signal obtained from the Panoramic Image Transformation (B2) is fed into Background Subtraction unit (B3) and Motion Detection and Tracking unit (B4). The output received at B4 is a transformed panoramic image. This image is then fed into Audio-Video Fusion unit (A5).

Block C

Audit Trail and Monitoring System is also able to receive input from Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS is able to provide information such as time and location. This information is received by CI . The GPS information received by CI is fed into Location and Time Input unit (C2). The output of C2 is fed into the Data Formatter, which will prepare the data for recording purposes. Block D

In the present Audit Trail and Monitoring System, information such as the car speed and acceleration is also monitored and recorded. This information can be time tagged. This information is then fed into D2. The information from D2 is fed into Data Formatter (D3). The GPS information and Other Car Related Inputs received in Data Formatter (D3) is formatted and the output i.e. the formatter data will be fed into Recording Medium (El).

Block E and F

The Recording Medium (El) is connected to a Data Retrieval unit (Fl). The Recording Medium (El) receives inputs from Video Compression unit (B5) and also Data Formatter unit (D3). The output of the Recording Medium (El) is fed into the Data Retrieval unit (Fl) which outputs the information to an External Device (Fl), which is a device that is able to read the stored data from the storage medium such as a computer. The Wireless transmitter (E3) which receives inputs from Video Compression unit (A5), Audio Compression unit (A6) and Data Formatter (D3) transmits signal with encrypted data to the receiving station. The Processed Video Output unit (F2) receives input from A5, and the processed panoramic video can be viewed via the output of (F2).

Block G The Audit Trail and Monitoring System according to the present invention also provides for the automated adjustment of the field of view of the camera. This is achieved by using a mechanical motor to adjust the inputs of Gl and G2, to achieve the desired field of view. The inputs of Gl and G2 are fed into G3, which controls the mechanical movements of the camera.

While the invention has been shown and described with reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the scope of the invention. Consequently, the scope of the invention should not be limited to the embodiments, but should be defined by the appended claims and equivalents thereof.