Patent Issued for Use Of Vehicle Dynamics To Determine Impact Location (USPTO 10,919,475)

2021 FEB 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Technology Business Daily -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Panigrahi, Smruti R. (Farmington Hills, MI); Lu, Jianbo (Northville, MI); Hong, Sanghyun (Canton, MI); Scott, Jonathan (Chelmsford, GB); Filev, Dimitar P. (Novi, MI), filed on March 15, 2016, was published online on March 1, 2021.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,919,475 is Ford Global Technologies LLC (Dearborn, Michigan, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present invention relates in general to automotive crash detection, and, more specifically, to detecting the direction of an impacting body’s trajectory at the point of impact with a host vehicle and the location on the host vehicle of that point of impact.

“Vehicle crash detection is a well-developed technology in the context of passive restraint systems which deploy during a crash in order to protect the vehicle occupants. Specialized sensors and robust detection algorithms provide a high reliability in detecting the onset of a crash that has a sufficient severity to automatically activate a passive restraint.

“A typical crash sensing system may be comprised of an array of accelerometers, for example. Longitudinal and lateral acceleration sensor signals from the accelerometers can be generated within or communicated to a Restraints Control Module (RCM) which makes a deployment decision. Accelerometers mounted in the RCM have detection ranges from about -50 g to about +50 g. Satellite accelerometers remotely located in the front and sides of the vehicle typically have ranges from about -250 g tom about +250 g. Light to moderate impacts involving lower levels of acceleration cannot be reliably detected using the existing accelerometers. However, there would be benefits to having an ability to detect light impacts, i.e., when the impact severity is less than what the RCM module uses to initiate a restraint deployment.

“Although light impacts between vehicles do not cause significant damage to the driver or passenger directly, they could begin a chain of post impact events which can lead to undesired outcomes such as further impacts or rollovers. Therefore, the detection and recording of occurrences of light impact collisions may of interest to vehicle owners, vehicle fleet operators, law-enforcement personnel, and insurance providers. This invention discloses techniques and systems for detecting light impacts to enable many different kinds of reactions such as modified vehicle control, the real-time alerting of third parties (e.g., insurance, fleet, and law enforcement agencies), and the recording/storage of incident information in the vehicle for later use by fleet operators and law enforcement for accident reconstruction.

“When an impact occurs, it would be useful to automatically determine in real time not only the fact that an impact has occurred but also a direction of impact and the location along the outer perimeter of the vehicle where the impact has occurred. This information may be useful not only for reporting of incident details for accident reconstruction by crash investigators but also for real time control of vehicle systems including adapting or preparing passive restraint systems to deploy in a manner consistent with a developing situation or adjusting performance of powertrain systems for maintaining control and stability of the vehicle, for example.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In one aspect of the invention, a technique is provided for crash detection in a road vehicle which includes determining the location of an impact along an outer perimeter of the vehicle. Lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration, and yaw rate are measured during operation of the vehicle, wherein the lateral and longitudinal accelerations define a total acceleration. Occurrence of an impact is detected by comparing a total acceleration to an impact threshold. An impact angle is determined according to an arctangent of a ratio of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations. A center-of-gravity to impact distance is determined according to a mass of the vehicle, a moment of inertia of the vehicle, the measured accelerations, and the yaw rate. When the yaw rate is zero or less than a calibrated value and the impact angle is within a predetermined range of an integer multiple of 90.degree., then the impact location is determined in response to a projection of the impact distance selected according to signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations. Otherwise, the impact location is determined in response to a projection of the impact distance selected according to signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations and a sign of the yaw rate. As used herein, impact location typically means the coordinates (relative to the center-of-gravity of the vehicle) on the perimeter of vehicle where an impacting body strikes the vehicle (relative to the center-of-gravity of the impacting object).”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A crash detection method in a road vehicle, comprising: (a) measuring lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration, and yaw rate during operation of the vehicle, wherein the lateral and longitudinal accelerations define a total acceleration; (b) detecting occurrence of an impact by comparing the total acceleration to an impact threshold; © determining an impact angle according to an arctangent of a ratio of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations; (d) determining a center-of-gravity to impact distance according to a mass of the vehicle, a moment of inertia of the vehicle, the measured accelerations, and the yaw rate; and (e) when the yaw rate is less than a yaw threshold and the impact angle is within a predetermined range of an integer multiple of 90.degree., then determining an impact location in response to a projection of the center-of-gravity to impact distance selected according to signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations, otherwise determining the impact location in response to the projection of the center-of-gravity to impact distance selected according to the signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations and a sign of the yaw rate.

“2. The method of claim 1 wherein the selected projection is chosen from a plurality of trigonometric projections based on the impact angle and predetermined dimensions of the vehicle.

“3. The method of claim 2 wherein the predetermined dimensions include distances from a center-of-gravity to a vehicle front, a vehicle rear, a vehicle side, and vehicle corners, and wherein the predetermined dimensions further include angles defined by lines between the vehicle side, the center-of-gravity, and the vehicle corners.

“4. The method of claim 1 further comprising: storing the impact location in a nonvolatile memory; and wirelessly transmitting the impact location and a plurality of vehicle status parameters to a remote accident monitoring database.

“5. The method of claim 1 wherein the vehicle includes a passive restraint system for deploying a restraint to protect an occupant of the vehicle, wherein the method further comprises: adapting deployment of the restraint in response to the impact location.

“6. The method of claim 1 wherein the occurrence of the impact is further detected by comparing the yaw rate to the yaw threshold.

“7. A vehicle apparatus comprising: vehicle dynamics sensors measuring lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration, and yaw rate, wherein the lateral and longitudinal accelerations define a total acceleration; a controller network with at least one controller module communicatively coupled to the dynamics sensors, wherein the controller network: a) detects occurrence of an impact by comparing the total acceleration to an impact threshold; (b) determines an impact angle according to an arctangent of a ratio of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations; © determining a center-of-gravity to impact distance according to a mass of the vehicle, a moment of inertia of the vehicle, the measured accelerations, and the yaw rate; and (d) when the yaw rate is less than a yaw threshold and the impact angle is within a predetermined range of an integer multiple of 90.degree., then determines an impact location in response to a projection of the center-of-gravity to impact distance selected according to signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations, otherwise determines the impact location in response to the projection of the center-of-gravity to impact distance selected according to the signs of the lateral and longitudinal accelerations and a sign of the yaw rate.

“8. The vehicle apparatus of claim 7 further comprising non-volatile storage for recording the impact location and data associated with the impact including a time, a date, and a location.

“9. The vehicle apparatus of claim 7 further including a passive restraint system for deploying a restraint to protect an occupant of the vehicle, wherein the passive restraint system adapts deployment of the restraint in response to the impact location.

“10. The vehicle apparatus of claim 7 wherein the selected projection is chosen from a plurality of trigonometric projections based on the impact angle and predetermined dimensions of the vehicle.

“11. The vehicle apparatus of claim 10 wherein the predetermined dimensions include distances from a center-of-gravity to a vehicle front, a vehicle rear, a vehicle side, and vehicle corners, and wherein the predetermined dimensions further include angles defined by the vehicle side, the center-of-gravity, and the vehicle corners.

“12. The vehicle apparatus of claim 7 wherein the controller network further detects the occurrence of the impact by comparing the yaw rate to the yaw threshold.

“13. The vehicle apparatus of claim 7 further comprising a wireless transmitter for wirelessly transmitting the impact location and a plurality of vehicle status parameters to a remote accident monitoring database, wherein the controller network encodes the impact location according to a location-direction-yaw code for providing a low transmission overhead.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Panigrahi, Smruti R.; Lu, Jianbo; Hong, Sanghyun; Scott, Jonathan; Filev, Dimitar P. Use Of Vehicle Dynamics To Determine Impact Location. U.S. Patent Number 10,919,475, filed March 15, 2016, and published online on March 1, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,919,475.PN.&OS=PN/10,919,475RS=PN/10,919,475

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