WO2017044972A1

WO2017044972A1 - Automated vehicle impact detection and collision response system

Info

Publication number: WO2017044972A1
Application number: PCT/US2016/051374
Authority: WO
Inventors: Adam THIESSEN; Joseph GRIPPO
Original assignee: Thiessen Adam; Grippo Joseph
Priority date: 2015-09-10
Filing date: 2016-09-12
Publication date: 2017-03-16

Abstract

A fully -automated onboard vehicle collision response system, tailored to the design of a given vehicle and empirically expected damage to that vehicle, including likely injuries (based on age and body type estimates) sustained by passengers in a given collision, autonomously transmitting to emergency response network(s) in the vicinity of the collision scene. This invention allows emergency response personal to dispatch requisite resources and prepare for expected vehicle condition and passenger injuries prior to being dispatched and/or while in route to the collision scene. Thus, a much more efficient and informed collision response system is incorporated into traffic safety, and a driver or passenger need not even be conscious to activate the system, nor does an emergency response system need to rely on reports by eye-witnesses.

Description

AUTOMATED VEHICLE IMPACT DETECTION AND COLLISION RESPONSE SYSTEM

FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH: None.

SEQUENCE LISTING: None

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001 ] This application claims the benefit of, and priority to, U.S. Prov. App. Ser. No. 62/216,820, filed September 10, 2015, titled "Fully Automated Vehicle Impact Detection and Collision Response System", the content of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The present disclosure is directed to apparatus that is capable of detecting and analyzing vehicle collisions and communicating statistical data on the parameters and magnitude of such a collision to inform appropriate response by emergency responders.

BACKGROUND

[0003] This relates to response time from emergency services and the responders' preparedness to deal with injuries and other conditions upon arrival at the scene of a vehicular collision. This will allow the network of emergency responders to dispatch appropriate resources to a given situation, allowing the emergency response network to avoid overcommitting resources unnecessarily to a given collision event, freeing up resources in situations when two or more incidents are occurring simultaneously. Likewise, responders can be advised of the vehicle and passenger conditions while in route, and prepare accordingly for expected obstructions to reaching the injured and the types of injuries to passengers that were likely sustained. This is in contrast to other automated response systems, such as US20140288727 by Everhart as published September 25, 2014, that only give suggestion that a collision has occurred, not the assessment of vehicle condition and expected passenger injuries at the post-collision scene transmitted to emergency response personnel as described in this application. Likewise, in US20150360617, published December 12, 2015 and EP2955700, published December 16, 2015, both by Schulz and Sherony, the ability to detect and record video of a likely collision is disclosed, but again, no ability to assess actual vehicle damage and statistically probable passenger injury and relay such information to emergency response personnel is disclosed.

[0004] Current summonsing of emergency medical services has two significant weaknesses. To learn of an accident by word of mouth by those involved or by eye-witnesses. Both methods are subject to flaws. In the first, a possibly injured person must sometimes hit a request for assistance device in the automobile (when possibly over-incapacitated to do so), or someone must call in to emergency services via a cell phone or other devise, and this lends itself to a subjective interpretation by a given eye-witness or eye-witnesses.

SUMMARY

[0005] An improved emergency response system is self-activated, and imbedded onboard a vehicle. It uses a network of small resistors of varying tensile strength laid out in "sheets" on exterior framing of a vehicle. Such resistor sheets, or grids, are sequentially structured to break at disparate and predetermined magnitudes of force of impact, to degrees expected in all possible collision situations, in the region(s) of impact upon a given vehicle, indicating orientation(s) of impact upon vehicle and degree of force size of such impact(s). These resistors, laid out in parallel and imbedded in the framing of the vehicle carry a small but constant current supplied by a battery located in the least vulnerable to damage part of a given vehicle. This battery is recharged constantly when the vehicle is running, but will continue to work on reserves even if a given vehicle sustains damage that otherwise cut off this battery from other systems on the vehicle. Since the resistors are in parallel patterns, grids so to speak, the more functioning resistors there are, the lower the overall resistance of the grids, and therefore a higher current will flow through computer-read ammeters in the system. If the resistors, designed to break in damaged areas at varying levels of force of impact due to variations in tensile strength, are broken, the overall (equivalent) resistance in a given grid will increase (due to fewer resistors in parallel) and the ammeter reading of current in that grid will go down at constant voltage, signaling damage which the system's computer can translate into type and severity of damage and assess expected likely types of injuries sustained by the person(s) on board the vehicle.

[0006] Also integral to the disclosed non-limiting embodiment are sensors in the seats of a subject vehicle which will preemptively and automatically register the weight of each person in the vehicle, upon entrance into the vehicle, and computer-generate age range and body type statistics for each passenger that will further give a more detailed assessment of the type of passenger injuries expected for a given impact on the vehicle. That is, upon force of collision impact, related medical injury predictions to a given person's age and body type will be processing-ready in the disclosed non- limiting embodiment for computation and transmittal upon collision detection. The computer system (achievable by appropriate programming of any microprocessor capable of this level of

sophistication) will receive data upon collision from the ammeter array and will immediately collect, cross-reference, assess and transmit (based on age and body type of passengers and the type and level of force in a given collision in the affected section(s) of the vehicle) the data to emergency personnel, near-instantaneously informing emergency response network(s) in the vicinity or most near of how thorough of a response is necessary and what to expect upon arrival to the collision scene, making accessible the collision victim's or victims' exposure to force of impact and preparing for likely injuries prior to or while in route to the scene. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0007] Various features and elements will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the disclosed non-limiting embodiment. The drawings that accompany the detailed description can be briefly described as follows:

Fig. I is a schematic view of an example vehicle for use with a collision response system;

Fig. 2 is a schematic view of an example of apparatus for the collision response system;

Fig. 3 is a flow chart illustrating operations of the collision response system according to the disclosed non-limiting embodiment.

[0008] Furthermore, Fig. 2 is a perspective drawing of the invention that shows component parts and a sample arrangement of such parts, constructed as an example of the concept of the invention. Please note that only two layers of varying tensile strength resistor grids are shown, indicated by using two different common symbols for resistors, where like symbols indicate like tensile strength, and the sample disparate grids are indicated by grouping like resistor symbols. In reality, grid layers can be increased in number to the extent necessary to break at different levels of impact force such that all reasonable strengths and orientations of impact expected upon a given vehicle in any collision are accounted for. All manner of collisions then, based on tested empirical collision data for any particular vehicle, as regularly collected by vehicle manufacturers during a vehicle's design process, and the varying damages and effects on passengers that can be expected based on that testing, are accounted for.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0009] A collision response system for a vehicle is disclosed. The collision response system provides a system that initiates collection of physical, body-type data based on occupant weight for each occupant upon entry into vehicles. This weight data accesses libraries in the onboard computing system that includes the breadth of injuries in any manner of collision likely to be sustained by any given occupant in any manner of collision as tested by auto manufactures during the crash testing and safety development of a given vehicle. The collision response system includes multiple arrays of overlapping grids of electrical resistors imbedded into the outmost parts of a vehicle. These resistor grids vary in tensile strength, so that the likelihood of a given grid breaking during a given collision varies in such a way as to provide information to the onboard computing microprocessor that is analytical of the severity of collision and in what part of the vehicle the collision occurred.

Furthermore, these grids are laid out in parallel circuitry, with as minimal of current readable by appropriately placed ammeters able to read changes in the current. Because, in parallel circuitry, effective resistance drops as more resistors are added in parallel, the breakage of some resistors in a collision will cause effective resistance to increase, and current to therefore drop under constant potential difference. The microprocessor is programed to identify changes in current, which signals breakage of resistors, and therefore indicative of damage to the vehicle in that part of the car where the change in current is registered. With such collision data, the embodiment allows for cross- 105 reference against the physical body-type data of each occupant, already accessed upon occupant entry into the vehicle, and by combining this data with the collision assessment, describe the damage to the vehicle and statistically likely injuries sustained by vehicle occupant(s) resulting from a given collision. The embodiment transmits this data to emergency responders immediately upon completion of analysis, which in computer time, is near-instantaneous.

110 [0010] Fig. 1 schematically illustrates a vehicle 20 with a collision response system 22. The

emergency response system 22 generally includes an electrical resistor pattern of grids with appropriately placed ammeters to read changes in current 24.

[001 1 ] The electrical resistor pattern of grids with ammeters 24 may include various tensile strengths to identify a condition associated with the vehicle 20 such as variable collision damage sustained upon 115 the vehicle 20. 23 is a non-specific or limiting sample representative of any manner of wiring that may be necessary on a given vehicle to operate the emergency response system based on the nature of a given vehicle design, which can vary widely. In the disclosed non-limiting embodiment, the electrical resistor grid system with ammeters 24 includes coverage of the exterior of the vehicle 20 adequate to identify every collision sustained on any non-transparent part of the vehicle 20.

120 [0012] The control system generally includes a control module 40 with a processor 42, a memory 44, and an interface 46. Imagined in this embodiment is that the control module 40 is a stand-alone unit, or other system such as a cloud-based system with its own dedicated battery 21 , also centrally located in the least vulnerable to collision damage area of the vehicle. Such a battery would maintain charge as any rechargeable vehicle battery, based on a given vehicle model design, but would still operate if

125 heavy damage to vehicle 20 has occurred. The processor 42 may be any type of microprocessor having desired performance characteristics. The memory 44 may include any type of computer readable medium that stores the data and control algorithms 48 described herein below. Other operational software for the processor 42 may also be stored in the memory 44. The interface 46 facilitates communication with ammeters 24, and the communication system 50.

130 [0013] The communication system 50 is to include wireless capability that is operable to

communicate with an off board system 52 (illustrated schematically). The off board system 52 may include, for example, a terrestrial cellular tower in communication with a switching network to provide communication with an emergency responder 56. An emergency responder 56 may include, for example, police, ambulance, fire, etc. 51 is demonstrative of any manner of operable

135 electromagnetic signal capable of communicating data. [0014] The communication system 50 further includes a positional system that is operable to determine the location of the vehicle 20 such as a GPS device. The communication system 50 is operable to utilize its included positional ability to communicate the collision and likely passenger injury status and position of the vehicle 20 to the off board system 52.

140 [0015] Fig. 2 is a sample illustration of the electrical resistor array and ammeter grid 24 in a

representative of any outer portion of vehicle 20 as seen in Fig. 1. It includes the connections to the control system 40 and independent voltage source 21. For ease of clarity, resistors of one tensile strength are identified further as 24A (all like resistor symbols share this common tensile strength), resistors of another tensile are identified as 24B, (all like resistor symbols share this common tensile

145 strength), and 24C marks an ammeter (all symbols identical to that identified as 24C are likewise ammeters).

[0016] With reference to Fig. 3, in this disclosed non-limiting embodiment, an algorithm 100 for operation of the collision response system 22 is schematically illustrated. The functions of the algorithm 100 are disclosed in terms of functional block diagrams and it should be appreciated by

150 those skilled in the art with the benefit of this disclosure that these functions may be enacted in either dedicated hardware circuitry or programmed software routines as a computer readable storage medium capable of execution as instructions in a microprocessor based electronics control embodiment such as the control system 40. That is, the memory 44 is an example computer storage media having embodied thereon computer-useable instructions such as the algorithms that, when

155 executed, performs a method 100 of automated emergency response.

[0017] The algorithm 100 of for automated emergency response initially utilizes the weight sensor system 34 to detect the weight of all occupants of vehicle 20, which is read and processed in the control module 40 (step 102) to access statistical crash testing data for a given physical body type. The control module 40 is then operable to determine what stored data is applicable to each occupant 160 in the event of a collision based on the characteristics of any likely statically allowed manner of collision, it should be appraised that "likely" as defined herein may encompass various statistical probabilities.

[0018] In step 104, baseline current activated when the vehicle is operating or parked and occupied, is monitored by the control module 40. In step 106, any changes in current in given ammeters 24C are 165 identified as a vehicle collision. In step 108, any detected changes in current in any such ammeters

24C are processed to determine location of impact upon vehicle and severity of force of that impact as correlated to statistical crash test libraries stored in control module 40 and utilized to select likely post-collision vehicle condition and occupant injuries resulting from this impact. In step 110, data accumulated in step 108, together with vehicle location is relayed via communication system 50 to 170 emergency responders 56 in vicinity or nearest the collision scene utilizing cellular network 52. It should be appraised that "likely" as defined herein may encompass various statistical probabilities.

[0019] The use of the terms "a," "an," "the," and similar references in the context of description (especially in the context of the following claim(s) are to be construed to cover both the singular and 175 the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or specifically contradicted by context. The modifier "about" used in connection with a quantity is inclusive of the stated value and has the meaning dictated by the context (e.g., it includes the degree of error associated with measurement of the particular quantity). All ranges disclosed herein are inclusive of the endpoints, and the endpoints are independently combinable with each other.

180 [0020] Although the non-limiting embodiment has specific illustrated components, the embodiment of this invention are not limited to this particular combination. It is possible to use some of the components or features from the non-limiting embodiment in alternate combinations.

[0021 ] It should be appreciated that like reference numerals identify corresponding or similar elements throughout the several drawings. It should also be appreciated that although a particular 185 component arrangement is disclosed in the illustrated embodiment, other arrangements will benefit herefrom.

[0022] Although particular step sequences are shown, described, and claimed, it should be understood that steps may be performed in any order, separated or combined unless otherwise indicated and will still benefit from the present disclosure.

190 [0023] The foregoing description is exemplary rather than defined by the limitations within. One non- limiting embodiments are disclosed herein, however, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that various modifications and variations in light of the above teachings will fall within the scope of the appended claim(s). It is therefore to be appreciated that within the scope of the appended claim(s), the disclosure may be practiced other than as specifically described. For that reason, the appended

195 claim(s) should be studied to determine true scope and content.

OPERATION

[0024] In operation, vehicle manufacturers mold the on-vehicle components of the system into the necessary portions of the vehicle as appropriate for a given vehicle design and its empirical collision data. This statistical data is pre-loaded onto the included non-limiting embodiment's computing 200 system such that collision data relevant to a given passenger's physical body type and likely injuries sustained in a any collision circumstance Upon impact upon such a vehicle, collision damage and injury information is assessed though ammeter readings by the on-board microprocessor (also located in the least vulnerable portion of the vehicle with the system voltage source). This information is near-instantly transmitted to an emergency response data reception system so that emergency personal can dispatch adequate and prepared resources to the scene of the collision.

Claims

CLAIM(S)

Claim 1 : An on-board automated vehicle impact detection and collision response system comprising:

A system of grids of resistors laid out in parallel and varying per grid by tensile strength molded into a given vehicle's frame, and

An information processing system consisting of a protected voltage source, weight sensors, array of ammeters, necessary ultra-flexible wires to maintain current in the system at all times including a collision event, and a means of data analysis and transmission via cell phone (microwave) frequency or other transmission frequency,

whereby, in the event of a vehicle collision, data will be automatically sent to emergency responders detailing the severity of the collision, type of damage to the vehicle and likely injuries sustained by passengers, allowing responders to appropriately respond with allocation of resources and prepare for expected injuries prior to or while in route to the collision scene.