Prior art

To find the most relevant prior art for US patent 11017668, I would typically search the USPTO database for citations listed within the patent document itself. "Prior art" refers to any publicly available information that existed before the filing date of a patent application that might describe the claimed invention, either identically or similarly. Patent examiners use prior art to determine if an invention is novel and non-obvious.

Based on the provided patent text, US11017668 cites U.S. Pat. No. 6,697,730 in its detailed description. This is explicitly mentioned as a proposal for a central assigning system and communication devices for vehicles.

However, to provide a comprehensive list of all prior art cited by US11017668, I need to access the full patent document from the USPTO database directly, as the provided text is a summary and might not include all examiner-cited prior art. The USPTO's Patent Public Search tool allows searching for patents by publication number. Once the patent document is retrieved, I would then examine the "References Cited" section.

Without direct access to the USPTO database for the complete list of cited prior art, I can only detail the one explicitly mentioned in the description:

Prior Art Reference:

• Full Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 6,697,730
• Publication/Filing Date: Not explicitly stated in the provided text, but its issuance date is prior to the filing of US11017668, given it's cited as an existing proposal.
• Brief Description: This patent describes a central assigning system and communication devices associated with vehicles for transmitting and receiving information. The current patent (US11017668) states it makes advances over such systems by providing methods to reduce driver/rider workload, improve trust, offer visual communication to external riders, automatically determine and register transport capacity, and characterize ad-hoc transport capacity like traditional transit systems.
• Potentially Anticipates: Based on the description, U.S. Pat. No. 6,697,730 potentially anticipates general concepts related to a central system for managing vehicle information and communication for transportation services. US11017668 distinguishes itself by claiming specific innovations and methods that improve upon these existing concepts, making the system "more practical and useful." Therefore, it could potentially anticipate broad aspects of claims related to a networked transportation system, but the specific innovations of US11017668 would likely be found in claims detailing these improvements (e.g., specific methods for security, visual displays, stochastic modeling, or ad-hoc matching). To pinpoint exact claims, a detailed comparison of the claims of US 6,697,730 and US11017668 would be necessary.