AUTONOMOUS DRIVER ASSISTANCE SYSTEM AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING METHOD THEREOF

• US 20150177007A1
• Filed: 12/23/2013
• Published: 06/25/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Automotive Research & Testing Center
• Original Assignee: Automotive Research & Testing Center
• Inventors: SU, Yi-Feng, LI, Ming-Hung
• Granted Patent: US 9,091,558 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 30/00 Purposes of road vehicle drive control systems not related to the control of a particular sub-unit, e.g. of systems using conjoint control of vehicle sub-units
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 30/12 Lane keeping
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 30/165 Automatically following the path of a preceding lead vehicle, e.g. "electronic tow-bar"
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/34 Route searching; Route guidance
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3407 specially adapted for specific applications
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3647 Guidance involving output of stored or live camera images or video streams
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0246 using a video camera in combination with image processing means

Abstract

An autonomous driver assistance system is integrated with a vehicular control system to constantly detect ambient road environment of the vehicle, identify a vehicle ahead with same driving route to a destination, and follow the vehicle ahead by autonomous driving to the destination. Signals of direction indicators of the vehicle ahead can be recognized to determine a driving direction and driving state of the vehicle ahead beforehand, thereby reducing the chances of emergency brake and collision and increasing driving efficiency. Without expensive radar detection equipment, the present invention can be easily integrated with a vehicular control system to tackle the high installation cost and integration difficulty of conventional autonomous driver assistance apparatuses.

Claims

1. An autonomous driving method performed by an autonomous driver assistance system mounted in a vehicle, the method comprising steps of:

generating a planned route to a destination;

performing road detection of the planned route to obtain roadway information in front of the vehicle including an image of lane markings, a distance to a vehicle ahead, a signal of direction indicators of the vehicle ahead, and a collision alert;

performing positioning detection to obtain an actual position of the vehicle compared with the planned route to determine if a driving route of the vehicle matches the planned route;

integrating driving safety of the vehicle to detect and determine a driving condition of a driver of the vehicle and actively control a travelling condition of the vehicle upon autonomous driving; and

performing the autonomous driving to determine if the image of the lane markings has lane markings, if the lane markings are available, controlling the vehicle to drive along the lane markings to the destination by the autonomous driving according to the steps of generating the planned route and performing road detection of the planned route, if the lane markings are not available, detecting if the vehicle ahead is driving along the same planned route, and if determining that the vehicle ahead follows the same planned route, combining the autonomous driving and the positioning detection to drive the vehicle and follow the vehicle ahead to the destination.

2. The autonomous driving method as claimed in claim 1, wherein after the lane markings of the image are recognized, a turning angle of a steering wheel of the vehicle is calculated according to a curvature of one of the lane markings by the following equations;

3. The autonomous driving method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the signal of the direction indicators of the vehicle ahead is recognized by steps of:

acquiring an image in front of the vehicle;

detecting a vehicle ahead on the image;

estimating a position and a size of the vehicle ahead;

configuring an ROI (Region of interest) of the image;

performing image binarization on the ROI;

performing subtraction between positions of an identified light spot and a lateral symmetry axis of the vehicle on the image performing morphological dilation or erosion filtering;

estimating a center point;

determining if the signal is on the left or right of one of the direction indicators of the vehicle ahead; and

determining if n frames have continuously appeared and n frames have disappeared, and if positive, determining that the direction indicator on the left or on the right of the vehicle ahead sends out the signal.

4. The autonomous driving method as claimed in claim 3, wherein the autonomous driver assistance system acquires a collision time and a collision distance by performing steps of:

detecting a surrounding environment of a vehicle with the distance-detecting module;

determining if a signal indicated by the direction indicators signal is a left turn or a right turn;

predicting a collision time through a collision prevention algorithm after determining the signal of the direction indicators; and

activating a driving safety mechanism to control the vehicle.

5. The autonomous driving method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the driving safety mechanism has steps of:

determining if a time to collide with the vehicle ahead is less than a braking threshold, if positive, activating a braking assistance system, and if negative, determining if enough space around the vehicle is available to avoid a collision; and

prompting the driver or activating steering intervention to move the vehicle to the space for avoiding the collision.

6. The autonomous driving method as claimed in claim 5, wherein when detecting and determining that the driver of the vehicle is in an unconscious state, an autonomous steering intervention is activated.

7. An autonomous driver assistance system mounted on a vehicle and comprising:

an autonomous driving control device adapted to connect to a vehicle control system of the vehicle for issuing an alert or controlling a travelling condition of the vehicle;

a road detection device connected to the autonomous driving control device for acquiring a roadway image in front of the vehicle and detecting a distance to a vehicle ahead and a signal of direction indicators of the vehicle ahead;

a telemetic device connected to the autonomous driving control device for transmitting radio signals out or receiving external radio signals, planning a driving route of the vehicle and positioning the vehicle; and

a vehicle safety integration device connected to the autonomous driving control device for detecting a driving condition of a driver of the vehicle;

wherein the road detection device determines if the roadway image has lane markings, if the lane markings are available, the telemetic device controls the vehicle to drive along the lane markings to the destination by autonomous driving according to the planned driving route and the positioning of the vehicle, if the lane markings are not available, the telemetic device detects if the vehicle ahead is driving along the same planned route, and if determining that the vehicle ahead follows the same planned route, the telemetic device combines the autonomous driving and the positioning to drive the vehicle and follow the vehicle ahead to the destination.

8. The autonomous driver assistance system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the autonomous driving control device is adapted to acquire vehicle signals from a vehicle signal module, and issue an alert through a prompting device connected with the autonomous driving control device or actively controls a brake or an accelerator of the vehicle through the vehicle control system to move the vehicle forward or stop the vehicle after combining and calculating the vehicle signals.

9. The autonomous driver assistance system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the road detection device has:

an image-acquiring module acquiring the roadway image in front of the vehicle for the road detection device to recognize the vehicle ahead and the direction indicators of the vehicle ahead according the acquired road image; and

a distance-detecting module detecting a distance between the vehicle and the vehicle ahead.