BIOMETRIC ADMITTANCE DEVICE FOR A TIME BASED SUBSCRIPTION TO CAR WASH SERVICE

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an admittance device for admitting a user access to car wash services.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Car wash sites often discount to users that frequently use the car wash site, and frequently users need to buy for a certain amount of money in order to achieve the discount. Today users frequently achieve the discount by buying a multiple number of car washes at the same time, and the car wash sites hereafter provide a credit card with an amount of access points that the user can spend to access the car wash service. The discount is applied e.g. by providing the user with 10 access points when he/she buys 8 points, thus the user gets 2 access points for free. Users that use the car wash system very often find that such discount systems is not sufficient, and instead they want a car wash subscription service where the user pays for unlimited access to the car wash system for a given time period. For instance, by paying the same amount of money each month and thereafter get unlimited access to the car wash service for one month at a time.

Today car wash sites typically provide a credit card to frequent users and these users can thereafter get access to the car wash system by using his/her credit cart. However, many car wash sites are unstaffed and one major disadvantage of the credit card system is that two or more malicious users can share the same credit card, and thus achieve the discount without being entitled to it. At unstaffed car wash sites it is impossible for the owner to check if the user is entitled to a credit card, and this problem even occurs in connection with staffed car wash sites, where the staff often cannot recognize the users. This is especially a problem in connection with

subscription car wash services, since many malicious users then can share the same credit card and thus abuse the car wash subscription service resulting in a drastic reduction in the car wash site owner's profit. As a consequence, no car wash sites offer car wash subscription services.

OBJECT AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the invention is to overcome some or all of the above mentioned problems.

This is achieved by the invention as defined by the independent claims, and other advantageous embodiments of the invention are defined by the dependent claims. The benefits and advantages of the present invention are explained and discussed in the detailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the following, preferred embodiments of the invention will be described referring to the figures, where

figure 1 illustrates a block diagram of a car wash service system comprising an admittance device according to the present invention,

figure 2 illustrates a flow diagram of how a user could use the car wash service system and admittance device illustrated in figure 1 ,

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Figure 1 illustrates a car wash service system comprising an admittance device (101) according to the present invention. The admittance device is embodied as a microprocessor, microcontroller, PC or the like comprising processing means (103), volatile (105) and none-volatile (107) storage means, a number of input/output ports (109a - 109e) for communication with peripherical devices, and a network adapter enabling the admittance device

to communicate through a data network (113) such as LAN, WAN, the internet etc. The user communicates with the admittance device through input (115)/output(117) means such as a keyboard, mouse, touchpad, trackball, touch screens, monitors, speakers etc. connected to input/output ports (109a) and (109b) or integrated as a part of the admittance device (101 ). The car wash service system comprises a number of car wash facilities (119a, 119b), such as In-Bay Automatics comprising an automatic machine that rolls back and forth over a vehicle while washing it, "tunnel washes" using conveyors to push or pull the vehicle through a series of fixed cleaning mechanisms or the like. The admittance device can admit a user access to one of the car wash facilities whereby the user can wash his/her car. The car wash service system further comprises a payment system (121 ), such as a credit card terminal or a cash machine adapted to receive payment from a user. The payment system makes it possible for the user to pay in order to use the car wash service, e.g. by opening a subscriber account where the user pays an amount of money for unlimited access to the car wash service for a given time period. The admittance system is connected to a body sensor embodied as a fingerprint scanner (123), which is used to uniquely identify the user. Alternatively to the fingerprint scanner for identifying the user, other body sensors where the identification is based on body characteristics of the user could be used - e.g. an iris scanner, a facial scanner, a DNA scanner, a voice recognizer etc.

In this embodiment the admittance device comprises a user register stored as a database in the non-volatile memory (107) or in an external server connected to the network (127). The database stores user specific data in a user record. The user specific data could for instance comprise a user ID, address, telephone number, age, gender, user habits defining how the user uses the car wash service, identification data, subscription data specifying the time period for which user has subscribed the car wash service. The identification data is suitable for identifying the user, and could for instance

be a personal user name and access code or unique body characteristics such as fingerprints, DNA, facial structures, iris structures, voice characteristics etc. Further, the body characteristics could be used as a link in order to identify the ID of the user and the user's user record.

The admittance device makes it possible to admit a user access to a car wash service based on the user's ID and body characteristics. It is hereby possible to prevent users with wrong ID and body characteristics from accessing the car wash service in question. It is hereby possible to offer a car wash subscription service where the user pays for unlimited access to the car wash service, without the car wash service provider risking that malicious users abuse the subscription service. This is achieved because it is possible to uniquely identify the users based on unique body characteristics, such as fingerprint, eye structure, DNA, facial structure etc. due to the link between the user's body characteristics and the user ID. It is therefore impossible for two users to share one user account giving access to the car wash service, because the admittance device could be adapted only to grant access to the car wash service if the body characteristics measured by the body sensor match the body characteristics linking the to ID of the user. The database could be embodied in a data memory storage, e.g. on a server connected to a network or integrated as a part of the admittance device, and could besides the link between the detected body characteristics and the ID of said user also comprise user specific data such as address, telephone number, age, gender, type of car, user habits defining how the user uses the car wash service. The identification means could for instance be embodied as a processor instructed to search through the database in order to find the link between the body characteristics and the user ID and thereby identify the user.

The different car wash facilities (119a and 119b) could be any known car wash facility and such car wash facilities typically offer many different kinds

of car washes. The admittance device could also be adapted to determine a usage recommendation based on the user specific data stored in the database. The usage recommendation could for instance recommend which kind of car wash the user should use, or recommend a wax treatment in connection with the car wash. The usage recommendation could for instance be determined based on the car type, time since last car wash, weather conditions, previous user habits, etc.

Figure 2 illustrates a flow diagram of an embodiment of the method according to the present invention. The flow diagram illustrates how the admittance device illustrated in figure 1 acts when a user wants to use the car wash service. Solid lines indicate the flow path and dashed lines indicate communication with users, storage and peripherical devices. The admittance device is initialized in step 201 such that it gets configured to communicate with the input/output devices (115, 117), the car was facilities (119a, 119b), the payment system (121 ), the fingerprint scanner (123) and optionally a network (113). The admittance device is further configured for communication with a user (203) via input means and a graphical user interface displayed on a screen as described in figure 1. Initially the user (203) starts to use the admittance device, and the admittance device asks in step (205) if the user has used the car wash service before and thus is a registered user. The admittance device starts up a registration process (207) where a new user record is created in a user register (209), if the user has not used the car wash service centre before. The registration process comprises a step where the user enters personal information such as name, address, age, phone number, e-mail, etc. Further, the topography of the user's finger is determined by the fingerprint scanner (123) in order to establish a unique identification of the new user. The finger topography could later on be used to identify the user and link the user to the user record stored in the user register.

On the other hand, if the user has used the car wash service before, the admittance device starts a login process (211), where the admittance device identifies the user and the user's user record in the user register (209). The user is in this embodiment identified through the fingerprint scanner (123) and the user therefore places his/her finger at the fingerprint scanner which scans the topography of the finger, and the user record is identified by finding the user record that matches the finger topography. Other body characteristics as described in relation to figure 1 could be used when identifying the user.

The user is in step (213) offered a number of options, e.g. the possibility of editing his/her user data (215), starting a payment process (217) or starting to use on of the car wash facilities. A data editing process (215) is started up, if the user wants to edit his/her user data. The data editing process makes it possible for the user to change his/her user data stored in the data register (209) for instance in order to register address changes, change member status, change preferred settings etc. The user could also choose to perform a payment whereby he/she can e.g. renew his/her subscription period by paying a certain amount of money. This is achieved through the payment system (121 ) which allows the user to pay an amount of money for instance by using a credit card or cash. The payment system would in the case of credit card payment be securely connected to a money transfer server (not shown) as known in the art of payments systems and thereby allow credit card payments. The payment is registered in the user record in the use register and the subscription data is also renewed such that the subscription period corresponds to the paid amount of money. The payment system could alternatively be embodied as an automatic payment system that automatically transfers money from the user's bank account to the car wash service provider, and the automatic payment would also update the subscription data in the user record. The user is in this way always sure that he/she has access to the car wash service.

Once the user has chosen which car wash facility and kind of car wash he/she wants to use, the admittance device checks (225) if the user has subscribed to the chosen car wash facility and kind of car wash and activates (227) the car wash facility if the chosen car wash facility and car was is included. On the other hand, the payment process (217) is activated if the chosen car wash facility and kind of car wash are not included and the user can then pay additional money e.g. for an extended car wash service.

The above described method and admittance prevents a user from abusing a time based subscription car wash service, because only users that match the bio characteristics stored in the database and that have paid for the subscription service are allowed to access and use the car wash service. The consequence is that users that do not match the bio characterizes stored in the database are prevented from using the car wash service. By using the users' bio characteristics as identification means it is impossible for malicious users to share the same subscription account, and the owner of the car wash does therefore not loose profit due to abuse of the car wash subscription service.

It is to be understood that the shown embodiments only serve as describing examples and that a person skilled in the art would be able to construct other embodiments which differ from the shown embodiments without diverging from the scope of the claims.