Method of alerting driver to condition of suspension system

• US 10,569,613 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2017
• Issued: 02/25/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tenneco Automotive Operating Company Incorporated (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Tenneco Automotive Operating Company Incorporated (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hadi, Rod, Golin, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Shaawat, Mussa A
• Application Number:
  US15/716,671
• Publication Number:
  US 20180093543A1
• Time in Patent Office: 881 Days
• CPC Class Codes: B60G 17/0165 to an external condition, e.g. rough road surface, side wind
• CPC Class Codes: B60G 17/0185 for failure detection
• CPC Class Codes: B60G 2401/142 Visual Display Camera, e.g. LCD
• CPC Class Codes: B60G 2600/084 Supervisory systems
• CPC Class Codes: B60G 2800/80 Detection or control after a system or component failure
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/0825 using optical means

Abstract

An electronic device and a method for determining whether a vehicle suspension system has degraded by positioning the electronic device in a vehicle includes activating a camera to initiate data capture within the electronic device. The camera is positioned to capture a change in a field of view during vehicle operation. The method includes calculating a vehicle suspension operating characteristic based on information captured by the camera and determining whether the calculated vehicle suspension operating characteristic exceeds a threshold. A signal indicative of suspension degradation is output when the threshold is exceeded.

Claims

1. An electronic device comprising:

a processor;

a camera operable to capture a change in a field of view during operation of a vehicle, wherein the field of view is defined to include a first portion of an image in the field of view exhibiting a lighter background than a second portion of the image in the field of view to provide a sharp contrast between the first and second portions of the image; and

a suspension evaluation system operable to determine whether a degradation of suspension system performance has occurred based at least partly on the change in the field of view of the camera, wherein the processor is operable to determine a vehicle suspension operating characteristic based on information captured by the camera, wherein the processor is operable to compare the vehicle suspension operating characteristic to a threshold and output a signal indicative of suspension system degradation when the threshold is exceeded.

2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the electronic device is equipped with an image stabilization system and the microprocessor accesses data collected by the image stabilization system to determine the magnitude of camera displacement.

3. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the microprocessor stores camera displacement information.

4. The electronic device of claim 3, wherein the microprocessor is operable to compare images captured by the camera at different times and compares the images to determine a frequency of camera displacement.

5. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the first portion of the image includes the sky and the second portion of the image includes an automobile interior.

6. A method for determining whether a vehicle suspension system has degraded by positioning an electronic device in the vehicle during operation, the method comprising:

activating a camera to initiate data capture within the electronic device;

positioning the camera to capture a change in a field of view during vehicle operation, wherein positioning the camera includes having a first portion of an image in the field of view exhibiting a lighter background than a second portion of the image in the field of view to provide a sharp contrast between the first and second portions of the image;

calculating a vehicle suspension operating characteristic based on information captured by the camera;

determining whether the calculated vehicle suspension operating characteristic exceeds a threshold; and

outputting a signal indicative of suspension degradation when the threshold is exceeded.

7. The method of claim 6, further including accessing image stabilization data generated by the microprocessor and determining a magnitude of camera displacement based on the image stabilization data.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the image stabilization data is generated from an active image stabilization system.

9. The method of claim 6, further comprising comparing frame-by-frame images captured by the camera to determine a frequency of camera displacement and calculating the vehicle suspension operating characteristic based on the frequency of camera displacement.

10. The method of claim 6, further comprising displaying geographical route data obtained from the global positioning system which corresponds to the captured change in a field of view data.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein positioning the camera includes having the first portion of the image include the sky and the second portion of the image include an automobile interior.