TRAFFIC PROFILING AND ROAD CONDITIONS-BASED TRIP TIME COMPUTING SYSTEM WITH LOCALIZED AND COOPERATIVE ASSESSMENT

• US 20110130947A1
• Filed: 11/30/2010
• Published: 06/02/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Appy Risk Technologies Limited (Trak Global Group Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Intelligent Mechatronic Systems Inc. (Trak Global Group Ltd.)
• Inventors: Basir, Otman A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,449,507 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/119
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0104 Measuring and analyzing of parameters relative to traffic conditions
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0125 Traffic data processing
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0133 for classifying traffic situation
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/052 with provision for determining speed or overspeed speed measuring in general G01P
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/09626 where the origin of the information is within the own vehicle, e.g. a local storage device, digital map
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0967 Systems involving transmission of highway information, e.g. weather, speed limits transmission of navigation instructions to the vehicle G08G1/0968

Abstract

This invention localizes traffic condition detection and classification to a vehicle. Vehicles work cooperatively to fuse their traffic condition assessments so as to produce larger geographical coverage and more reliable evidence of the conditions. The system can be executed on an onboard device which includes at least one of the following: GPS capabilities, connection connected to the vehicle to measure vehicle speed, or communication with a cell phone. In the example of the cell phone, speed can be computed from phone GPS, a GPRS/CDMA, or both. Otherwise, vehicle speed can be determined obtained from in-vehicle on-board diagnostic system (e.g. using the OBD-II protocol) or based on GPS and accelerometer readings.

Claims

1. A traffic measuring system comprising:

a location-determining device;

a speed limit database storing speed limits for a plurality of road segments;

a speed-determining device for determining a current speed of the system; and

a processor determining a current location of the system, including a current road segment from the location-determining device, the processor determining a speed limit of the current road segment, the processor comparing the current speed of the system to the speed limit of the current road segment to determine a traffic condition.

2. The traffic measuring system of claim 1 wherein the location-determining device includes a GPS receiver.

3. The traffic measuring system of claim 2 wherein the speed-determining device includes the GPS receiver.

4. The traffic measuring system of claim 1 wherein the processor further reports the traffic condition to a server remote from the traffic measuring system.

5. The traffic measuring system of claim 4 wherein the processor requests traffic information from the server for road segments other than the current road segment.

6. The traffic measuring system of claim 5 wherein the processor requests traffic information from the server for road segments based upon a current direction of travel of the system and based upon the current location of the system.

7. The traffic measuring system of claim 4 wherein the system communicates the traffic information via voice.

8. The traffic measuring system of claim 7 wherein the processor performs an abstraction of the traffic information from the server and then communicates the abstracted traffic information via voice.

9. The traffic measuring system of claim 8 wherein the processor is programmed to determine a route to a destination, the processor requesting traffic information based upon the route.

10. The traffic measuring system of claim 1 installed on a vehicle.

11. The traffic measuring system of claim 1 further including a server remote from the traffic measuring system, wherein the processor reports the traffic condition to the server, wherein the location-determining device, the speed limit database, the speed-determining device and the processor are part of an onboard device on a vehicle, the system including a plurality of onboard devices on a plurality of vehicles, each reporting traffic conditions to the server.

12. The traffic measuring system of claim 11 wherein the server receives traffic conditions from a plurality of sensors other than the onboard devices and wherein the server weights the traffic conditions from the sensors differently from the traffic conditions reported by the onboard devices.

13. The traffic measuring system of claim 11 wherein the onboard devices further includes transceivers for sending traffic conditions directly to one another.

14. A method for measuring traffic including the steps of:

a) determining a current location of a vehicle;

b) determining a current speed limit based upon the current location of the vehicle;

c) determining a current speed of the system; and

d) comparing the current speed of the system to the current speed limit to determine a traffic condition;

wherein said steps a-d) are performed on the vehicle.

15. The method of claim 14 further including the step of reporting the traffic condition to a remote server.

16. The method of claim 15 further including the step of merging the reported traffic condition with reported traffic conditions from other vehicles.

17. The method of claim 16 further including the steps of receiving voice description of traffic from a user in the vehicle and wherein determining a traffic condition further includes determining a traffic condition based upon the voice description of traffic from the user.

18. The method of claim 17 further including the steps of abstracting numerical traffic condition information to generate speech to report the traffic condition to a user in the vehicle.

19. A method for measuring traffic including the steps of:

a) receiving a spoken description of a traffic condition;

b) receiving a location of the traffic condition;

c) parsing the spoken description of the traffic condition to determine the traffic condition; and

d) associating the traffic condition with the location, based upon said step c).

20. The method of claim 19 further including the steps of receiving a plurality of spoken descriptions from a plurality of different users, parsing the plurality of spoken descriptions to determine a plurality of traffic conditions and merging the plurality of traffic conditions.

21. The method of claim 19 further including the steps of receiving a request for traffic condition information, and performing an abstraction of the traffic condition associated with the location and then communicating the abstracted traffic condition via speech.