METHOD FOR ASSISTING A DRIVER IN DRIVING A VEHICLE, A DRIVER ASSISTANCE SYSTEM, A COMPUTER SOFTWARE PROGRAM PRODUCT AND VEHICLE

• US 20150344031A1
• Filed: 05/22/2015
• Published: 12/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH (Honda Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH (Honda Motor Company)
• Inventors: WEISSWANGE, Thomas H.
• Granted Patent: US 9,669,830 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 2555/00 Input parameters relating to exterior conditions, not covered by groups B60W2552/00, B60W2554/00
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 30/14 Adaptive cruise control
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/931 of land vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/24 the display being orientated or displaced in accordance with movement of object carrying the transmitting and receiving apparatus, e.g. true-motion radar
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/295 Means for transforming co-ordinates or for evaluating data, e.g. using computers
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/165 for passive traffic, e.g. including static obstacles, trees
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/166 for active traffic, e.g. moving vehicles, pedestrians, bikes
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/167 Driving aids for lane monitoring, lane changing, e.g. blind spot detection

Abstract

The invention regards to a method for assisting a driver in driving a vehicle, comprising the steps of producing sensor data by at least one sensor physically sensing the environment of a host vehicle and/or obtaining data conveying information about the environment of a host vehicle, generating a plurality of representation segments each segment being a portion of an entire area of representation of the environment of the host vehicle at a particular point in time wherein a relative position of the portion of such representation segment with respect to a current position of the host vehicle corresponds to a possible position of the host vehicle at that particular point in time, combining the representation segments to a spatio-temporal representation of the environment of the host vehicle; evaluating the spatio-temporal representation and outputting an assistance signal on the basis of an evaluation result.

Claims

1. Method for assisting a driver in driving a vehicle, comprising the steps of:

producing sensor data by at least one sensor physically sensing the environment of a host vehicle and/or obtaining data conveying information about the environment of a host vehicle;

generating a plurality of representation segments each segment being a portion of an entire area of representation of the environment of the host vehicle at a particular point in time wherein a relative position of the portion of such representation segment with respect to a current position of the host vehicle corresponds to a possible position of the host vehicle at that particular point in time;

combining the representation segments to a spatio-temporal representation of the environment of the host vehicle;

evaluating the spatio-temporal representation; and

outputting an assistance signal on the basis of an evaluation result.

2. Method according to claim 1, wherein

the representation segments have a predetermined shape and the corresponding discrete point in time is determined based on the host vehicle'"'"'s velocity.

3. Method according to claim 2, wherein

the discrete point in time corresponding to each representation segment is estimated by one of

an extrapolation of the current dynamics of the vehicle,

mapping of one or multiple stereotyped behavior options of the host vehicle onto the entire area of the representation,

a probabilistic or deterministic summation of all possible behaviors of the host vehicle, and

an explicit prediction of the most likely executed future behavior of the host vehicle.

4. Method according to claim 1, wherein

the representation segments are generated by prediction of semantic labels of a plurality of units of the representation segment for the particular point in time or

by cutting out the representation segment from an entire area representation with predicted semantic labels of a plurality of units.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein

information about the environment of the host vehicle obtained from a plurality of data sources is associated with its corresponding unit of the representation by at least one of

generating one label for each unit the label corresponding to information only from a prioritized data source,

associating information from each data source to one label respectively and combining these labels to a label vector,

using a multidimensional distribution of a probability of a number of labels,

creating a new label from a plurality of labels corresponding to individual information.

6. Method according to claim 5, wherein

labels include information about at least one of the following semantic characteristics:

road, host vehicle lane, adjacent lane, opposing lane, incoming road, outgoing road, bicycle lane, walkway, entrance, pothole, off-road, ice, snow, emergency lane, highway entrance, highway exit, occupied road, static occupied, static vehicle, dynamic vehicle, safety area around/next to particular parts of traffic participants/structures, stopping area, one-way street, parking space, intersection area, historically dangerous area, puddle, zebra crossing, active zebra crossing, traversable obstacle, road debris, animal crossing area, free area, unknown area, pedestrian zone, bus stop, bus lane, traffic island, cobblestone, slippery road, slanted road, speed bump, wet road, tram rails, gravel.

7. Method according to claim 1, wherein

in the evaluation step a plurality of possible future movement behaviors of a traffic participant are compared and its future movement behavior is predicted.

8. Method according to claim 7, wherein

the prediction is conducted for the host vehicle and/or other traffic participants.

9. Method according to claim 7, wherein

the predicted future movement behavior of other traffic participants is used for the generation of the representation segments.

10. Method according to claim 7, wherein

the possible future movement behaviors are evaluated individually for each representation segment or are evaluated as representation segment independent trajectories.

11. Method according to claim 1, wherein

in the evaluation step the size of the host vehicle or the size of the host vehicle plus an additional safety area is taken into consideration.

12. A driver assistance system, designed for being mounted on a host vehicle and executing the method according to claim 1.

13. The driver assistance system according to claim 12, comprising at least one of

a device for detecting traffic objects and/or a device for estimating their position and velocity,

a device for detecting road infrastructure elements,

a device for car-to-car communication,

a device for self-localization and/or a device for reading the host-vehicle'"'"'s state.

14. The driver assistance system according to claim 12, wherein

the system comprises computing means for performing the generation of the representation segments, the combination of the representation segments and the evaluation.

15. A computer software program product embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, said product performing, when executed on a computer, the method according to claim 1.

16. A vehicle including a driver assistance system according to claim 12, wherein the driver assistance system influences controls of the vehicle based on the assistance signal.