How often do you find yourself lost in the parking lot searching for your car? If your answer is pretty often and if you are an iPhone user, fret not! Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has filed a couple of patents today for a simple but ingenious solution to put an end to the forgetful car owner’s misery. This system will be able to identify if the car is parked, note down its location and direct the user back to this location later.

The specialty of this system is that it can work even in the absence of a strong GPS signal or data connection. What’s more, you don’t have to remind yourApple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone to save your car’s location every time. Your phone will do so automatically as soon as it detects that you have parked your car

iPhone will use car’s Bluetooth to compute its operational state

So, how will your Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)iPhone know if your car is parked or not? It has two ways of doing this. The first method is by communicating with your vehicle directly via Bluetooth or Bluetooth LE. Here, the car will send a signal to the phone when the door is opened or ignition is on and send another signal to indicate when the ignition is off.The second method is by using the iPhone’s inbuilt accelerometer to measure the difference in speeds when the car is in motion and when it is parked.

Combination of GPS and iPhone sensor data to mark the route

After confirming that the car is parked, yourApple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)iPhone will register this location and continue to plot your movement. By overlaying this plot with data from GPS, the iPhone will be able to direct you back to the car. In the case of intermittent GPS signal or in locations where connectivity is poor, the iPhone will mark hard points wherever GPS signal is available. For the rest of the plot, it will use data from its internal sensors like the accelerometer, gyroscope and pedometer and generate the most likely route.