Distributed Video Nodes for Blind Spot Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems for vehicle and pedestrian mobility do not allow drivers or pedestrians to observe areas beyond their direct visibility, such as around bends or obstacles, which hampers safety and situational awareness, especially in autonomous driving and monitoring systems.
Innovation Solution
A distributed network of wireless communication nodes, each equipped with sensors and video cameras, generates and shares real-time video streams to provide extended visibility, automatically detecting and transmitting views of areas not directly observable, allowing users to perceive approaching vehicles or pedestrians from hidden directions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a driver or pedestrian relies only on direct visibility, then the system remains simple and requires no additional devices, but safety and situational awareness are reduced due to inability to observe areas beyond direct line of sight
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces intermediary devices (other vehicles, stationary cameras, mobile devices) that act as mediators to provide visual information from areas not directly observable. These intermediaries capture and transmit video streams, enabling the driver or pedestrian to see around bends, obstacles, and blind spots without requiring a complex centralized surveillance system.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates visual copies of distant or hidden areas by having other devices capture video streams from their locations and transmit them to the user. This allows the driver or pedestrian to observe remote views as if they were directly present, providing situational awareness of areas beyond direct line of sight through copied visual information.
2Loss of information
If video streams are transmitted from multiple nodes to provide comprehensive coverage, then situational awareness is improved, but data transmission requirements and network load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by having each node transmit video streams selectively based on its local situation and the specific needs of other nodes. Rather than every node transmitting continuously to all nodes, each node determines which video streams are most valuable to transmit based on local conditions such as detected hazards, road geometry, and receiver position, optimizing the balance between information quality and transmission overhead.
3Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If the system provides access to remote views from multiple sources, then the ability to detect approaching vehicles or pedestrians is improved, but the complexity of selecting and managing multiple video streams increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where receivers provide information about their position, orientation, and detected hazards to potential transmitters. Transmitters use this feedback to determine which video streams are most useful to send to specific receivers, dynamically adjusting transmission based on real-time conditions. This feedback loop simplifies stream selection by focusing transmissions on areas of actual interest rather than providing all possible views.
Data Source
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AI summary
A system and method for controlling the mobility of vehicles or pedestrians comprising a plurality of mobile or fixed distributed devices provided with network connection functionality that are adapted so as to be placed along a transport network and/or installed on board of vehicles and/or carried by pedestrians who happen to be on the transport network. The devices are adapted so as to generate respective video streams in real time relative to their own direct view of portions of the transport network, and to transmit the video streams to at least another receiving device whose area of proximity intersects with its own. The transmission of the video streams is only activated upon the occurrence of certain predetermined operating conditions, based on the types of devices whose areas of proximity intersect, and on the reciprocal position and direction relative to each other.