{
  "patent_number": "US 12398901",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Air Conditioners Use Radio Signals to Locate Your Remote Control",
  "original_title": "Air conditioning system, operation terminal, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium",
  "summary": "A system that helps an air conditioner remote find its own location inside a building by comparing radio signal strengths from multiple AC units against its last known position.",
  "what_it_does": "This system uses a network of air conditioners that constantly broadcast beacon signals. The user's remote control picks up these signals and measures their radio wave intensity. Instead of just guessing where it is, the remote calculates its current position by looking at its previous known location and comparing the current signal strengths to a set of pre-mapped candidate locations in the room. It specifically looks for the best match by comparing the order of signal strengths to the expected distances from each AC unit, using a mathematical method called Levenshtein distance to find the most likely spot.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover systems that rely solely on GPS for indoor positioning",
    "Does not cover location tracking that ignores the device's previous known position",
    "Does not cover systems that use visual markers or cameras to determine location",
    "Does not cover non-radio based proximity detection like ultrasound or infrared"
  ],
  "filed": "2020-03-27",
  "granted": "2025-08-26",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Mitsubishi Electric Corp",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/mitsubishi-electric-corp",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Makoto Katsukura",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/makoto-katsukura"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 0,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "ai_ml",
    "mechanical"
  ],
  "abstract": "An air conditioning system having a plurality of air conditioners installed in a predetermined place and an operation terminal to communicate with the air conditioners, wherein each of the air conditioners includes a first radio communication unit to send a beacon signal, the operation terminal includes a local terminal communication unit to receive two or more beacon signals send by two or more air conditioners of the air conditioners; a location presumption unit to presume a current location by using two or more radio wave intensities measured from each of the two or more beacon signals and a last location, the current location being a location in which the operation terminal is currently located, the last location being a location presumed last as a location of the operation terminal.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/12398901/raptor-thrust-to-weight",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/12398901/raptor-thrust-to-weight/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US12398901",
  "relatedPatents": []
}