Affecting Functions of a Vehicle Based on Function-Related Information about its Environment

• US 20180004210A1
• Filed: 07/01/2016
• Published: 01/04/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2016
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Motional AD, LLC (Aptiv PLC)
• Original Assignee: nuTonomy, Inc. (Aptiv PLC)
• Inventors: Iagnemma, Karl, Wolff, Eric, Qin, Baoxing
• Application Number:
  US15/200,050
• Publication Number:
  US 20180004210A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 30/10 Path keeping cruise control for automatically following a preceding vehicle B60W30/165
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 50/0098 Details of control systems ensuring comfort, safety or stability not otherwise provided for
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3407 specially adapted for specific applications
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3453 Special cost functions, i.e. other than distance or default speed limit of road segments
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0212 with means for defining a desired trajectory involving a plurality of land vehicles G05D1/0287
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096725 where the received information generates an automatic action on the vehicle control
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096741 where the source of the transmitted information selects which information to transmit to each vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096775 where the origin of the information is a central station
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/143 inside the vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/146 where the parking area is a limited parking space, e.g. parking garage, restricted space
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal

Abstract

Among other things, information is received about a function-related feature of an environment of a vehicle that has been identified in connection with a location of the vehicle. Execution of a function of the vehicle is affected to alter performance characteristics of the function based on the identified function-related feature.

Claims

1. A method comprising

based on information received about a function-related feature of an environment of a vehicle that has been identified in connection with a location of the vehicle, affecting execution of a function of a vehicle to alter performance characteristics of the function based on the identified function-related feature.

2. The method of claim 1 in which the function-related feature comprises a geographic region.

3. The method of claim 1 in which the function-related feature comprises a road feature.

4. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises a software process.

5. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises motion planning.

6. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises trajectory tracking.

7. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises actuator control.

8. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises decision-making.

9. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises perception processing.

10. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises localization of the vehicle.

11. The method of claim 1 in which the function comprises sensor data recording on-board the vehicle.

12. The method of claim 1 in which the execution of the function is affected by switching from one function to another function.

13. The method of claim 1 in which the execution of the function is affected by altering an operation of a function.

14. The method of claim 1 in which the affecting of the execution of the function is based on parameter settings.

15. The method of claim 14 in which the parameter settings are selected from among two or more different sets of parameter settings.

16. The method of claim 1 in which the affecting of the execution of the function is based on prior information.

17. The method of claim 16 in which the prior information comprises a simulation model.

18. The method of claim 16 in which the prior information includes two or more simulation models.

19. The method of claim 1 comprising receiving the information about the function-related feature from a database.