Field of application of the invention

The present invention refers to the transportation of people, and more precisely to a method and system for the safe sharing of travel itineraries being followed by subjects offering transportation to subjects requesting transportation.

Review of the prior art

The transportation of people usually occurs using one's own car, since trips can be made without any itinerary or time constraint. Nevertheless, one such option is not always the most favorable, e.g. for reaching the workplace in big cities where traffic and parking are quite difficult. Moreover, not everyone has their own car, or is willing to sustain the costs of fuel and possible highway tolls and parking fees. In order to remedy such drawbacks, the most obvious choice is to use public transport or taxis. In the first case, the user is obliged to adhere to the itinerary and timetable of the transport means, which are often overcrowded during rush hour; the user may also be subjected to aggression or delinquency when the means are less crowded. The so-called dial-a-bus services combine good itinerary and time flexibility with low costs. This service requires reservation and consists of bus transportation at a time and place selected by the user. Unlike common public buses, the dial-a-bus follows itineraries that are not fixed but rather dictated by the stops reserved by the travelers. The disadvantage of this transport service lies in the fact that the travel times can be extremely long if - between the time a passenger gets on and off the bus - there are numerous other stops selected by other passengers. Finally, the fact that the stops are at the passenger's discretion ensures that one such service can only be offered in urban areas.

On the other hand, the taxi service reserved by phone provides for the following steps:

a) the caller calls the control center, communicating his current location;

b) the control center communicates the address of the caller to a taxi driver closest thereto;

c) the control center communicates the identification number of the taxi and the estimated arrival time to the caller;

d) the caller recognizes the arriving taxi by the aesthetic characteristics of the motor vehicle and by the identification displayed on the doors and on the rear of the vehicle; he approaches the taxi and communicates the desired destination to the taxi driver.

Apart from user costs, clearly higher than those for public transportation services, the taxi service is potentially risky both for the driver and for the transported client, due to the possible establishment of complete anonymity of the caller/transported person. Indeed, the only information necessary for the control center for facilitating the service is the location of the caller and a telephone number for recontacting him, not necessarily the personal phone number. Robbery or aggression against taxi drivers has occurred in the past, as well as abuse against the transported client, even if the latter is less frequent. In addition, although discriminations of any kind are not permitted, since this is a public service, the taxi driver could refuse to drive the user who reserved the trip.

Another solution which allows reaching a destination at low costs is offered by the travel sharing "communities". By "community", it is intended a group of people who meet, discuss and exchange information through the Internet, interacting via forum or chat room based on instantaneous messaging programs. Sup- ply and demand are matched through a protocol similar to the following:

- the members of the community about to perform a trip towards a specific destination, having free places in their own car, offer a free "ride/passage" or a ride in which trip expenses are shared;

- the ride offers sent on-line are inserted in a list published on the Internet site of the community;

- similarly, the members of the community seeking a ride towards a specific destination send their own request on-line;

- the ride requests sent on-line are inserted in another list published on the Internet website of the community;

- the offerer reviews the list of requests in order to find a potential passenger;

- in an autonomous manner, the requester reviews the list of the offers in order to find a ride;

- the offerers and requesters that share the same destinations can at this point contact each other for the purpose of organizing the trip.

Travel sharing communities also have various disadvantages. First of all, for the registration it is simply necessary to communicate an email address or provide general information without having to present any identification document. Clearly, this reflects into a safety problem, since an ill-intentioned person could register himself in the community, providing false general information for other purposes. In addition, the lists are usually accessible to all web navigators, hence to all users of the community, who are therefore obliged to renounce their own privacy, at least towards the other users. Last but not least, the service offered by means of the community is not a "real time" service, since the offer of the ride may precede the actual date of the trip by several days, while the request could be made for imminent trips. In addition, the consultation of the lists is not easy, and could involve items that are no longer valid that respective members did not care to remove.

Object of the invention

Therefore, the object of the present invention is to indicate a method and a system capable of ensuring full safety in the private transportation of single individuals, between which a relationship of anonymity can exist.

Summary of the invention

In order to attain such objects, the present invention has as object a method for sharing travel itineraries between offerers of rides on motor vehicle towards destinations established by such offerers and requesters of rides towards destinations established by such requesters, the requests and the offers being respectively forwarded to a server controlled by a manager of the sharing service at which said offerers and requesters are registered, wherein according to the invention it includes the following steps:

a) each offerer cyclically transmits to the server information for identifying, on a map, the itinerary about to be undertaken or currently underway;

b) each requester includes, in the request, the indication of his current position on the map;

c) on the basis of the overall continuously received information, the server seeks a requester that is currently situated closest to a point of an itinerary and transmits a same pairing code to the requester and offerer who is about to follow or is currently following that itinerary, and also transmits to the latter information on the requester's geographical location;

d) the offerer shows, outside the motor vehicle, visible information for recognition by the requester;

e) the requester and offerer meet;

f) both the requester and the offerer verify the correctness of the mutual pairing code, as essential condition of the sharing of said itinerary, as described in claim 1.

Further characteristics deemed innovative of the present invention are described in the dependent claims.

According to one aspect of the invention, the server at step c) searches for the requesters who have the same destination as the offerers, and for each of such requesters:

- calculates the distance between the current position of the requester and the nodes of the itineraries transmitted by such offerers;

- compares the calculated distances and finds the minimum distance;

- compares the minimum distance with an acceptance threshold;

- if the minimum distance is less than or equal to the acceptance threshold, pairs the request to the offer whose itinerary information includes the node that gave rise to the minimum distance. According to one aspect of the invention, the server in step c) estimates the time necessary for the offerer to reach the requester location, and transmits such information both to the offerer and the requester.

According to one aspect of the invention, that said information for identifying the itinerary includes the current geographical position on the map, the destination, and a succession of routes, each comprised between contiguous nodes.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step e), the offerer reaches the location of the requester coinciding with one point of the itinerary.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step c), the server transmits to the requester the geographical indication of said point of the itinerary closest to him, and in step e) the requester reaches such point.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step c), the server transmits the information directed to the requester by means of short text messages, such as those of the SMS service.

According to one aspect of the invention, the requester transmits to the server the ride request via short text message, such as those of the SMS service, or by vocally formulating the request to an operator.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step a), the information for identifying the itinerary followed by the offerer is generated by a satellite navigation system in the motor vehicle.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step c), the geographical location of the requester is represented on the satellite navigation system screen in the motor vehicle.

According to one aspect of the invention, the server transmits the information directed to the offerer by means of a mobile radio communications network and the offerer in turns transmits the information directed to the server by means of the same mobile radio communications network.

According to one aspect of the invention, the registration of the requesters and the offerers is carried out by the manager of the sharing service on the basis of the certified identity, and the server authenticates the offer and request messages respectively forwarded by registered offerers and requesters.

According to one aspect of the invention, each potential offerer or requester opens credit at the manager of the service at the time of registration, the fulfillment of a ride request involving an increase of the credit available to the offerer and a decrease of the credit available to the requester, the server ignoring the ride requests whose fulfillment would determine a charge greater than the credit currently available.

According to one aspect of the invention, said mutual pairing code is a personal identification code that the manager of the service assigns at the time of registration.

According to one aspect of the invention, the visible information for recognition is shown on a display with which the motor vehicle is equipped.

According to one aspect of the invention, the visible information for the recognition of the offerer by the requester is projected on the small passenger side mirror of the motor vehicle.

According to one aspect of the invention, the visible information for the recogni- tion of the offerer by the requester is the mutual pairing code.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step f), the requester inserts his own card in a card reader with which the motor vehicle is equipped, said personal identification code stored in such card, the correctness of the code being signaled to the offerer inside the card.

According to one aspect of the invention, in step f), the requester equipped with a passive RFID device in which said personal identification code is stored approaches the motor vehicle equipped with a suitable RFID transceiver, the correctness of the code being signaled to the offerer inside the motor vehicle.

Another object of the invention is a system for sharing travel itineraries between offerers of rides on motor vehicles towards destinations established by such offerers on a map and requesters of rides towards destinations established by such requesters on the map, the system including:

- a server controlled by a manager of the sharing service at which said offerers and the requesters are registered, the server having stored the map and be- ing accessible by the terminal apparatuses of the requesters and offerers by means of a communications network,

wherein according to the invention it also includes: - means in which a personal identification code is stored that is assigned to each registered requester and offerer;

- the server including:

- means for queuing the information cyclically transmitted by the offerers, said information being adapted to identify the itinerary about to be undertaken or currently underway on the map;

- means for queuing the information transmitted by the requesters, said information comprising, in addition to the destinations, the current locations of the requesters;

- means for processing the information extracted from the queuing means to search for a requester who is currently situated closest to a point of an itinerary, said means processing assigning a same pairing code to the requester and to the offerer who is about to follow or who is currently following that itinerary;

- means for interfacing with the network for sending the pairing codes to the requesters and offerers and for sending to the latter information on the geographical location of the requester;

- an apparatus installed on the motor vehicle of each offerer, said apparatus including:

- a GPS receiver that controls a transmitter connectable to said communications network in order to transmit to the server information regarding the initially set itinerary and possible subsequent modifications;

- control means connected to the receiver included in said terminal apparatus for acquiring, from the server, information regarding the location of the requester and the personal identification code of the same, and also connected to the GPS receiver for displaying the location on the map;

- display means placed outside the motor vehicle, connected with the control means in order to receive the identification code of the requester to be displayed;

- means for the mutual recognition between the requester and the offerer, actuatable by means of coupling to said means which store the identification code of the requester, as described in the relative system claim. According to one aspect of the system invention, the server is configured in a manner so as to estimate, on the map, the time necessary for the offerer to reach the location of the requester on the basis of the itinerary information transmitted thereto by the offerer, and to transmit such time information both to the offerer and to the requester.

According to one aspect of the system invention, the ride requests are short text messages such as those of the SMS service, or the messages are vocally formulated to an operator.

According to one aspect of the system invention, the display means include an LED display.

According to one aspect of the system invention, the display means include a projector which projects the identification code of the requester on the small passenger side mirror of the motor vehicle.

According to one aspect of the system invention:

- said means which store the identification code of the requester consist of a card equipped with magnetic band, and

- said mutual recognition means include a card reader connected to said control means, and an LED controlled to flash, signaling to the offerer the correctness of the identification code of the requester.

According to one aspect of the system invention:

- said means which store the identification code of the requester consist of a passive RFID device, and

- said mutual recognition means include: a RFID transceiver connected to said control means, and an LED controlled to flash, signaling to the offerer the correctness of the identification code of the requester.

According to one aspect of the system invention, said apparatus includes a command for disabling the connection of the GPS receiver to said terminal apparatus, allowing the conventional use of the GPS receiver.

Advantages of the invention

The present invention truly allows the safe sharing of a travel itinerary, even between requester and offerer subjects who do not know each other, since, unlike known systems, each subject must present his own identity card at the time of registration. In addition, safety is increased due to the fact that, even if the driver wished to deviate from the pre-established route, the server receives information on itinerary changes in real time.

An important aspect of the proposed service is its nearly complete automatism, since the only interactions requested of the two subjects are those for setting the itinerary and confirming the ride by the offerer, and those for typing the destination and current geographical position by the requester.

The itinerary sharing service according to the invention can be advantageous for the requester and for the offerer since the transaction for the requested and provided service occurs without the payment of cash money.

Unlike travel sharing communities, the registered subjects do not have to consult lists of ride offers and requests and the service can be provided in real time, since the pairing of the requests with the offers, or vice versa, is carried out by the server for itineraries about to be undertaken, or already underway.

The service allows a potential offerer to be completely free to not configure himself as such and to use the GPS in a conventional manner.

The sharing service is independent of the length of the itineraries, the only limits in such sense being set by the geographical coverage area of the telecommunications network, by the geographical coverage area of the GPS signal, and by the geographical area of the service supply. The first area is extended nationally and internationally, the second area as well, whereas the extension of the third area will mainly depend on the number of network resources which will gradually be arranged on the territory.

Finally, the proposed service is not subjected to fixed and unchangeable itiner- aries like the public transportation routes.

Brief description of the figures

Further objects and advantages of the present invention will be clearer from the following detailed description of an embodiment of the same and from the enclosed drawings given as merely exemplifying and non-limiting, in which:

- Figure 1 shows a city street map on which two itineraries are indicated between a respective departure point and a common arrival point, which can be followed or are followed by two respective offerers the safe sharing service according to the method of the present invention;

- Figure 2 is a block schematization of a system for sharing itineraries according to the present invention;

- Figure 3 is a block schematization of a centralized server making up part of the system of figure 2;

- Figure 4 is a block schematization of a reception and transmission apparatus situated in a vehicle driven by the offerer the sharing of an itinerary shown in figure 1 , and of a passive RFID coupled to the aforesaid apparatus;

- Figure 4a is a variant of the figure 4 in which a card substitutes the passive RFID;

- Figure 5 shows the apparatus of figure 4 engaged in the activation of a light beam directed towards the small passenger side mirror in order to indicate the personal identification code of a requester selected to share the itinerary of figure 1 ;

- Figure 6 shows an LED panel applied on the rear of the motor vehicle of the offerer in order to highlight the aforesaid personal identification code;

- Figure 7 shows a sequential diagram of the messages exchanged between the mobile radio terminal of a requester and the server of figure 2, and between the apparatus of figure 4 of the offerer and the same server.

Detailed description of several preferred embodiments of the invention

In the following description, equivalent elements that appear in different figures can be indicated with the same symbols.

Figure 1 shows a street map that illustrates the main streets of Milan's center. Superimposed on the street map, it is possible to observe a schematization of the same consisting of a network whose branches are lines along the streets and whose nodes, more emphasized than the branches, represent the street intersections. Each node is associated with a pair of geographical coordinates (which identify its position on the ground surface) and with an integer that identifies the node, so that each branch of the network is identified by a pair of num- bers associated with the nodes placed on the two ends. The numbering of the nodes in unique in the map's effective territory. An itinerary from one intersection to another of the street map is thus describable by means of the ordered 2011/000261

sequence of pairs of numbers, which identify the branches corresponding to the roads followed on the route. As an example, the i ^th node is indicated with N,, and the branch comprised between an m ^th node and an n ^th node is indicated with R _n ,m or R _m ,n depending on the branch, and thus the street represented thereby is followed from the node N _m to the node N _n or vice versa. Each branch Rn.m is associated with the respective length so as to be able to calculate the actual length of the itinerary and estimate the partial or total running times based on an estimated or presumed speed.

In the street map, two routes IT1 and IT2 were indicated which the drivers of two cars 1 and 3 intend to follow in order to reach Piazza Ovidio, corresponding with node Ni ₉ , respectively starting from Piazza Firenze, corresponding with node Ni, and from Piazza Loreto, corresponding with node N20■ As an example, the itinerary IT1 followed by the car 1 is describable by means of the following sequence of branches: Ri , ₂ , R2,3 , R3,4 , 4,5■ Rs,e , Re,7 , R7,e · Rs,9 , R9,io , R10.11 > Rii,i2 , Ri2,i 3 , Ri3,i , Ri4,i 5 > i 5,i6 . Ri8,i7 . i7.i8 , Ri8.i9■ A pedestrian 2 is situ ^¬ ated at the intersection between Viale Tunisia and Corso Buenos Aires, corresponding with the node N12 and such person must reach Piazza Ovidio. As one may observe in the figure, the itinerary IT1 of car 1 passes by node N12, but the itinerary IT2 of the car 3 does not. Both the drivers of the cars 1 and 3 and the pedestrian 2 are registered in a safe service for sharing travel itineraries delivered by means of a system summarily schematized in figure 2. Greater detail in the definition of the itinerary is obtainable by introducing the indication of the street numbers and by dividing the branches into sub-branches, each of which comprised between two contiguous street numbers. A map described in such a manner is that used in the GPS navigation systems.

Figure 2 shows the aforesaid sharing system comprising a mobile radio communications network 4 (PLMN), corresponding with the second-generation cellular network (GSM/GPRS) and/or third generation cellular network (UMTS), to which the following apparatuses are connected: the fixed telephone network 40 (PSTN); a server 5 specialized in supplying the safe itinerary sharing service on behalf of a manager of such service; a plurality of data reception and transmission apparatuses 6, each on board a motor vehicle of a subject registered as of- fering the sharing of the itinerary that he is about to follow, or is already following; and a plurality of portable phones 8 better known as cell phones, each owned by a subject registered as requesting itinerary sharing. The server 5 is accessible by the cell phones 8 and by the apparatuses 6 by means of one's own telephone number. Within the network 4, a gateway 12 is placed which:

• receives, from the network 4, the SMS messages transmitted by the cell phones 8 of the requesters directed to the telephone number of the server 5 and transfers them thereto;

• receives the SMS directed to the requesters sent by the server 5 and via the network 4 forwards them thereto;

• receives, from the network, information of geographical type and non- geographical type, transmitted in packet data form by the apparatuses 6 and transfers such packets to the server 5;

• receives information of geographical type and non-geographical type sent by the server 5 and via the network transmits such information to the apparatuses 6.

Each data transmission and reception apparatus 6 is equipped with a first antenna 9 for receiving the radio signals irradiated by the satellites 10 of the GPS system, and a second antenna 1 1 for communicating with the mobile radio communications network 4. As an alternative to the SMS, the service requesters could access the server 5 by means of a personal computer connected to the Internet network, well-known to be overlapped with the PLMN and PSTN networks, and forward their requests by means of an electronic mail program or a browser used for downloading, compiling and sending an on-line module ar- ranged for such purpose on the website of the server 5. The access to the Internet network for sending the requests to the server 5 can also be made by means of a cell phone. Finally, the manager could advantageously set up a service center adjacent to the server 5 where operators accept voice-formulated requests, type them into a pre-established form and then send them to the server 5.

With reference to figure 3, the gateway 12 included in the PLMN 4 network comprises two sections 12a and 12b. The section 12a communicates with the network through short text messages, like those of the SMS service, below termed SMS. The section 12b communicates with the network through data packets in the format used in the access networks of the GPRS/UMTS systems. The section 12a also communicates with an interface 13 included in the server 5. In turn, the section 12b communicates with an interface 14 included in the server 5. The interface 13 is connected to a sequential buffer 15 in which the sharing service requests are stored in the order of receipt. Each service request comprises: the identification code IDn of the requester, the current geographical position Na of the requester and the destination that he intends to reach Nm. The interface 14 is connected to a sequential buffer 16 in which the service offers are stored in the order of receipt. Each service offer comprises: the identification code IDOn of the offerer, the current position Nn of the offerer, the destination that he intends to reach Nm and the itinerary that he intends to follow Nn, Nn+1 , Nm. The outputs of the two buffers 15 and 16 are connected to two respective inputs of a processing unit 17. The latter has two outputs: a first output connected to the input of an SMS formatter block 18, and a second output connected to the input of a packet formatter block 19. The output of the SMS formatter block 18. is connected to the interface 13. The output of the packet formatter block 19 is connected to the interface 14. A timing circuit 20 is also connected to the processing unit 17 and to the two buffers 15 and 16 in order to verify their filling and emptying status. The section 12a and the formatter block 18 are capable of being employed for general use, in order to assist in cases where the requester uses email or the web, or formulates voice requests to an operator of the service center.

In operation, the processing unit 17 carries out an activity of promotion of the rides, compatible with a real time service, i.e. without interacting with the offerers in order to ask for a start delay. The processing unit 17 manages the two buffers 15 and 16 placed upstream as two FIFO (First In First Out) memories from which information can be drawn in order to carry out the pairings. If the conditions for pairing requests and offers are not verified within the time necessary for processing a number of processes equal to the length of the queues, or if peaks of requests and/or offers are verified, the respective queues can be saturated, causing loss of the overwritten information, which will have to be aborted. In such case, the processing unit 17 sends an "Unanswered request" message to the requester and a "Canceled offer" message to the offerer. The available time of the processing unit 17 to create a pairing increases with the in- crease of the length of the queues. Overly short queues can cause excessive overwriting with loss of potential pairings. Overly long queues can also cause the loss of potential pairings; this is due to the fact that, even if the conditions for the pairing may exist, the offerer traveling along his own itinerary - due to the processing delay of the queues - may in the meantime have passed the lo- cation of the stationary offerer, thus making a ride offer futile. In order to reduce the incidence of inefficiencies of this type, queues must be sized by accounting for the forecast peak of the offers and requests and of the probability of the pairings between different geographical areas. Once the invention has had market success, mid-term and long-term statistical evaluations will be useful for such purpose. Let's take a very busy urban scenario like that of the city of Milan, represented in the map of figure 1 - this could allow the simultaneous presence of hundreds of requests and hundreds of offers independent of each other. Let's say that the buffer 15 due to a peak of ride requests towards San Siro stadium (for those going to a derby match) is nearly saturated with 300 requests, and that the buffer 16 of equivalent length contains 200 offers for the same destination. There remains little space in the buffer 15 for hosting requests towards the same or other destinations, and it is very probable that, for the aforesaid grounds, it will be not be possible to manage a peak of such size by using only the buffers FIFO 15 and 16. The optimum goal would be to not lose the surplus of 100 requests with respect to the 200 offers, but in order to succeed it is necessary to be able to increase the wait time during which the pairings to the itineraries are completed, in the hope that more offers will arrive than additional requests. For such purpose, as a general rule the processing unit 17 is preset to maintain the queues as empty as possible, thus to render them available to house the peaks of the two processes independent of offer and request generation. In the examined case, the processing unit 17 removes from the buffers 15 and 16 the 200 requests and the 200 offers which have the common destination of San Siro, and the same goes for the other destinations. The requests and offers removed from the two buffers for each group of common destinations are housed in the same number of second spare buffer pairs until the pairings are processed.

In detail, the processing unit 17 carries out the following operations:

- reads the buffer 15 and 16 starting from the requests and from the offers stored first and for each of these analyzes the geographical and non- geographical information contained therein;

- seeks the requesters who have the same destination as the offerers and for each of such requesters:

- calculates the distance between the current position of the requester and the nodes of the itineraries transmitted by such offerers with identical destination, compares the calculated distances and finds the minimum distance within an acceptance threshold, using for such purpose algorithms known for reducing the number of operations;

- pairs the request to the offer whose itinerary information includes the node which gave rise to the minimum distance less than or equal to the acceptance threshold. If there are several requesters whose distance is within the acceptance threshold, the requester is selected whose current position is the closest to the current geographical position of one of the aforesaid offerers;

- if the minimum distance is greater than the acceptance threshold, transfers the request into the second queue with lower priority;

- extracts, from the respective queues 15 and 16, the service requests and offers which were paired to each other;

- sends, to the SMS formatter 18, the information relative to: the estimated wait time and possibly the geographical position of a closer node to be reached if the current position of the requester is not at a point of the itinerary proposed by the offerer;

- sends, to the packet former 19, the information relative to: the point of the itinerary of the appointment with the requester and the personal identification code IDn of the requester; - receives, from the offerer, confirmation of the appointment that took place with IDn and thus considers the ride as having occurred;

- removes, from the buffers 15 and 16, the offers and the requests for which the ride can be considered as having taken place;

- increases the credit to the offerer so that the ride is considered as having taken place, and likewise decreases the credit of the requester;

- sends, to the packet formatter 19, information on the amount of the credit decrease;

- sends, to the packet formatter 19, information on the amount of the credit increase;

- removes the offers from the buffer 16, such that the offerer has reached his destination without sharing the itinerary;

- removes, from the buffer 15 and from the second queue with lower priority, the requests not yet paired with the offers at the expiry of the maxi- mum time allowed.

The SMS formatter 18 prepares a message in SMS format containing the information received in a predefined syntax and sends such message to the interface 13 for the forwarding.

The packet formatter 19 prepares a message in the format of a GPRS/UMTS packet containing the received information, and sends such message to the interface 14 for the forwarding.

With reference to figure 4, the apparatus 6 comprises a satellite navigation system 25 suitable for receiving the radio signals of the GPS system by means of the antenna 9. The navigator 25 is connected to the bus 22 of a microprocessor 26 supported by a relative circuit board comprising the interface and memory circuitry. The navigator 25 is equipped with a button 28a (touch screen) for informing the server 5 that the appointment with the requester 2 was successfully completed, and another button 28 for disabling the connection with the microprocessor 26, temporarily excluding the safe itinerary sharing service. The fol- lowing are also connected to the bus 22: a first transceiver 27 connectable to the mobile radio communications network 4 by means of the antenna 1 1 ; an active RFID device comprising a transceiver 29 equipped with an antenna 30 for the transmission of a low-power radio carrier and the reception of a return signal; the drive circuit 24 for an LED 31 ; a projector 32 of an alphanumeric code (XYZ12) that the server 5 associates with the respective request. Such code can be the code IDn assigned at the time of registration in the service. The pro- jector 32 visible in figure 5 is placed in the driver/passenger compartment of the motor vehicle 1 and the projected beam is directed towards the small rear-view mirror 39 on the passenger side. Outside the apparatus 6, a passive RFID 23 (also called tag) is visible, with which each service requester subject is equipped; stored in the tag 23 is the personal code IDn. The short-range radio carrier irradiated by the transmitter 29 activates the transmitter included in the tag 23 with the transmission of the personal code IDn stored in the tag itself. The on-board transceiver 29 receives the code IDn transmitted by the tag 23 and sends it to the processor 26 in order to command the lighting of the LED 31 , if the code is recognized as valid. With reference to figure 4a, as an alterna- tive to the passive tag 23 and the respective active RFID 29, it is possible to use a card with magnetic band 7 and a card reader 7a. The card reader is fixed outside the motor vehicle 1 , 3 of the offerer on the passenger side. The card 7 is possessed by each service requester. As an alternative to the projector 32, it is possible to use a light panel 33 applied on the back of the motor vehicle, as shown in figure 6.

Figure 5 shows the reception and transmission apparatus 6 fixed to the dashboard 35 of the motor vehicle 1 , 3. The apparatus 6 is equipped with a touch screen 36 by means of which the offerer interacts with the system. A red point appears on the screen 36 when the navigator 25 is driven by/employed for the itinerary sharing, otherwise the point is green. The projector 32 is fixed to the roof 36 at the front part thereof, close to the courtesy lights 37.

Figure 6 shows the rear of a motor vehicle , 3 of a sharing service offerer in which, through the rear window 41 , the LED light panel 33 is visible, fixed to the outside of the roof at the upper part flanking the stop lights 34. Analogous to the projector 32, the light panel 33 shows the personal identification code IDn (XYZ 2).

The system of Figure 2 is capable of providing an itinerary sharing service op- erating in safety according to a method which will presently be described in the form of a time sequence of messages, with the aid of figure 7. A Client/Server protocol is actively placed between service requesters and the server 5, as well as between service offerers and the server 5, where for the sake of simplicity the step is omitted through the gateway 12, which only acts as an intermediary. The starting point of the time sequence of events which will be described is established by the server 5, which receives the formulated requests and the offers in an entirely random manner and thus without a precise time order. In order to dynamically manage the two random processes, the server 5 includes the two sequential buffers 15 and 16 of equal time length, respectively fed from the new requests and from the new offers.

Starting from the hypothesis that the frequency of requests and the frequency of offers are on average equal to each other, the length of each buffer will be well- sized if it allows storing the peak of offers and requests, since in such a manner overwriting will be prevented. Figure 7 shows three vertical lines oriented downward, which denote the increasing time progression. The leftmost line represents the offerer 1 (OFR), the middle line represents the server 5 (SRV), and the rightmost . line represents the requester 2 (RIC). Starting, arbitrarily, from a service offer:

- OFR, during the time in which the sharing service is activated, cyclically sends a message 50 to SRV containing information relative to: the personal identification code ID1 , the current position LAT. (latitude), LONG, (longitude) calculated in real time by the satellite navigation system 25, the destination N19 set on the satellite navigation system 25 by means of the touch screen 36, the itinerary for reaching such destination calculated by the satellite navigation system 25 and coded by the sequence of nodes (N1 , N2, , N19).

- RIC, in an entirely extemporaneous manner, sends to SRV a request message 51 containing information relative to: the personal identification code ID2, the current geographical position CURRENT.POS with predefined syntax: for example City, Street, Number, and with the same syntax the destination DEST.POS that it is desired to reach. SRV, by means of a processing block physically obtained from the unit 17, analyzes the offer message 50 that arrived first to verify if the requested itinerary is compatible with the destination included in the first-arrived request message 51 , whose syntax is translated in the paradigm of nodes and branches typical for the map. If there is no compatibility between the first-arrived messages 51 and 50, SRV repeats the same inquiry in order to verify the compatibility between the first-arrived message 51 and all the offer messages such as 50 present in the queue. The completed operations are those already described with regard to the operation of the unit 17, which can lead to the pairings or to the cancella- tion of the offers and the requests executed in an independent manner with respect to each other and communicated with the same number of messages. Proceeding in the time sequence:

- SRV identifies an offer message 50 compatible with the request message 51 using the already described criterion, and therefore sends to RIC a mes- sage 52 in SMS format of predefined syntax containing the information relative to: the wait time STA and possibly the precise point of the itinerary to be reached for meeting OFR, only if the current geographical position of RIC is not at a precise point of the itinerary followed by OFR but is in any case close to one of the points, within the acceptance threshold. Otherwise SRV sends to RIC a message 63 whose content is "Unanswered request", otherwise SRV sends to OFR a message 64 whose content is "Canceled offer".

- SRV sends to OFR a message 53 in the format of a GPRS/UMTS packet containing the information relative to: the point (node N12) of the itinerary of the appointment with RIC, and the personal identification code ID2 of RIC to be displayed (XYZ12) outside the car 7 and also used for enabling the acquisition terminal inside the car 1 upon recognition of that code (ID2).

At this point, the meeting takes place between the offerer and the requester and both, while remaining anonymous, must recognize themselves as that offerer and that requester for that itinerary. The protocol continues in the following steps.

- OFR (arrow 65) displays the identification code ID2 of RIC on the external panel 33 or it projects it on the small mirror 39.

- RIC (arrow 66) recognizes OFR by reading his identification code ID2 indicated as stated above.

- OFR (arrow 67) in turn recognizes RIC by means of an ad hoc indication ac- tivated inside the car 1 (green LED 31 or acoustic alert) upon the approach of the requester equipped with RFID 23 or passage of the card 7 in the reader 7a.

- OFR sends to SRV a message 68 of "requester ID2 on board" type.

- SRV increases the credit of OFR and likewise decreases the credit of RIC. - SRV sends to OFR a message for indicating the amount of the increase of the respective credit.

- SRV sends to RIC a message for indicating the amount of the decrease of the respective credit.

A variant of the protocol of figure 7 is that it in which it is the offerer who must complete a small deviation from the pre-established itinerary in order to reach the requester. One such action must be accepted by the offerer, so that it is stated in the signed contract terms.

The variant could be verified when:

1. even if the pairing occurred, the distance between the current geographical position of the requester and the closest point of the itinerary of the offerer is at the limit of the acceptance threshold;

2. there are obstacles (such as bridges, overpasses, ...) such that the requester cannot reach the meeting point, or the requester has physical difficulties in moving (e.g. he is handicapped).

The server sends to the requester a message containing the information relative to the wait time, and to the offerer the current geographical position of the requester to be reached. During navigation, a message appears on the screen of the navigator in order to alert the offerer that it is necessary to make a deviation and the navigation software is obliged to recalculate an itinerary passing by the established meeting point.

On the basis of the description provided for a preferred embodiment, it is clear that several changes can be introduced by the man skilled in the art, without departing from the scope of the invention resulting from the following claims.