VEHICLE CONTROL SYSTEM

• US 20110118938A1
• Filed: 11/16/2010
• Published: 05/19/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/05/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hemisphere GPS LLC (Kubota Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Beeline Technologies Pty., Ltd. (Kubota Corporation)
• Inventors: MacDonald, Andrew John, Morrison, Campbell Robert, Reeve, David Robert
• Application Number:
  US12/947,620
• Publication Number:
  US 20110118938A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/41
• CPC Class Codes: A01B 69/008 automatic
• CPC Class Codes: A01B 79/005 Precision agriculture
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/188 for accumulated errors, e.g. by coupling inertial systems with absolute positioning systems
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 17/86 Combinations of lidar systems with systems other than lidar, radar or sonar, e.g. with direction finders
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/03 Cooperating elements; Interaction or communication between different cooperating elements or between cooperating elements and receivers
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/02521 using a radio-map
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0223 involving speed control of the vehicle vehicle fittings for automatically controlling, i.e. preventing speed from exceeding an arbitrarily established velocity or maintaining speed at a particular velocity, as selected by the vehicle operator B60K31/00
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/024 in combination with a laser lasers per se H01S
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0255 using acoustic signals, e.g. ultra-sonic singals sonar systems designed for anti-collision purposes G01S15/93
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0259 using magnetic or electromagnetic means
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/027 comprising intertial navigation means, e.g. azimuth detector inertial navigation G01C21/16; inertial navigation combined with non-inertial navigation instruments G01C21/165
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0278 using satellite positioning signals, e.g. GPS

Abstract

A vehicle control system having a controller and a spatial database adapted to provide spatial data to the controller at control speed. The spatial data provided from the spatial database to the controller can be any kind of data or information that has some relationship or association with “real world” geographical location, or if it is stored somehow with reference to geographical location. The spatial data received by the controller from the database forms at least part of the control inputs that the controller operates on to control the vehicle. The fact that the controller operates directly on information that is inherently associated with “real world” geographic location represents a change in thinking compared with existing vehicle control systems. In particular, it means that the control system of the present invention “thinks” directly in terms of spatial location. A vehicle control system in accordance with one particular embodiment of the invention comprises a task path generator, a spatial database, at least one external spatial data receiver, a vehicle attitude compensation module, a position error generator, a controller, and actuators to control the vehicle.

Claims

1. A control system as claimed in claim 1, wherein data is arranged within the database in accordance with a hash table which relates the memory allocations for the different items of spatial data within the database to corresponding indices.

7. A control system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the control system is adapted to receive data from at least one external source.

23. A control system as claimed in claim 1, including means for interpreting a user-defined path and converting the said user-defined path into a plurality of points representing the user-defined path.

2. A control system as claimed in claim 30, wherein the indices for the different items of data are determined according to the spatial location to which the respective items of data pertain.

3. A control system as claimed in claim 31, wherein a spatial hash key algorithm is used to generate the indices.

4. A control system as claimed in claim 32, wherein the spatial hash key algorithm operates so that data pertaining to spatial locations which are close to each other receive closely related indices.

5. A control system as claimed in claim 33, wherein the spatial hash key algorithm uses bitwise interleaving.

6. A control system as claimed in claim 34, wherein the spatial hash key algorithm uses double-precision floating-point numbers.

8. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the control system is adapted to receive data from at least one external source at control speed.

9. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the data received from the at least one external source is used to generate estimates of the vehicle'"'"'s pose.

10. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes GPS.

11. A control system as claimed in claim 39 wherein the GPS is supplemented by a SBAS.

12. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes an INS.

13. A control system as claimed in claim 41 wherein the INS includes one or more rate gyros, accelerometers or a combination of both.

14. A control system as claimed in claim 39, wherein the GPS is supplemented by a GBAS.

15. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes machine vision and/or image analysis.

16. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes LIDAR.

17. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes a magnetometer.

18. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes a tilt sensor.

19. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein the at least one external data source includes ultrasonic range and direction finding.

20. A control system as claimed in claim 36, wherein a filter is used to obtain a statistically optimised estimate of the state of the vehicle.

21. A control system as claimed in claim 48, wherein the filter utilises the data from the one or more external data sources to obtain the optimised estimate.

22. A control system as claimed in claim 49, wherein the filter is a Kalman filter.

24. A control system as claimed in claim 51, including means for generating a desired position, heading and instantaneous radius of curvature for the vehicle at each point on the user-defined path.

25. A control system as claimed in claim 52, wherein the points representing the user-defined path and the desired position, heading and instantaneous radius of curvature for the vehicle are entered into the spatial database.

26. A control system as claimed in claim 53, including means for calculating an error term relating to the difference between the vehicle'"'"'s actual position, heading and instantaneous radius of curvature and the vehicle'"'"'s desired position, heading and instantaneous radius of curvature.

27. A control system as claimed in claim 54, wherein the controller uses the error term to generate a control signal for controlling the vehicle.

28. A method for controlling a vehicle comprising entering spatial data relating to a region to be traversed by the vehicle into a spatial database, providing spatial data from the spatial database to a controller at control speed to control the vehicle as the vehicle traverses the region, and entering updated spatial data into the spatial database as the vehicle traverses the region.

29. A method for controlling spatial data from the spatial database to a controller at control speed to control the vehicle as the vehicle traverses the region, and updated spatial data being received into the spatial database as the vehicle traverses the region.