Drone-Assisted Vehicle Monitoring for Hidden Road User Collision Alerts
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current vehicle safety systems, including sensors in automotive vehicles and autonomous vehicles, often fail to detect dangerous situations involving unprotected road users, livestock, and wildlife, especially when these objects are hidden from view.
Innovation Solution
A method utilizing air-based vehicles equipped with vision sensors to track ground-based objects, predicting their trajectories, and alerting both the vehicle and the object of potential collisions, thereby mitigating traffic risks through automated and resource-efficient means.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If vehicle sensors are used to detect dangerous situations, then safety monitoring is provided, but detection reliability deteriorates when objects are hidden from view
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces air-based vehicles (drones) that operate in the aerial dimension to monitor ground-based objects. This dimensional shift allows the monitoring system to observe objects from above, bypassing occlusions caused by terrain, vegetation, or other obstacles that block ground-level sensors. The aerial perspective provides a new viewing dimension that fundamentally solves the problem of detecting hidden objects.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces air-based vehicles as intermediary monitoring devices between the ground-based objects and the central monitoring system. These drones act as mobile platforms carrying sensors that can detect and report on ground-based objects, effectively mediating the detection process and overcoming the limitations of direct ground-level sensing.
2Reliability
If air-based vehicles are deployed to track ground-based objects, then detection capability improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent designs air-based vehicles with multi-functional capabilities, combining vision sensors, trajectory prediction algorithms, and communication systems into single mobile platforms. These drones can simultaneously perform object detection, tracking, data transmission, and collaborative monitoring with other vehicles, reducing the need for multiple specialized systems and thereby managing complexity while enhancing detection capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges multiple monitoring functions into integrated air-based vehicle systems. By combining sensor arrays, processing units, and communication modules into unified drone platforms, the system achieves enhanced detection capability while avoiding the complexity of coordinating multiple separate systems. The consolidation of functions within single mobile units simplifies system architecture and management.
3Reliability
If multiple vehicles are monitored for spatial proximity, then collision risk detection improves, but computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements selective monitoring where the system focuses computational resources on vehicles and objects that are spatially proximate and pose potential collision risks. Rather than continuously analyzing all possible vehicle interactions, the system dynamically identifies and prioritizes relevant proximity cases, applying partial monitoring action only where needed. This approach maintains high collision detection reliability while significantly reducing overall computational resource consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enables air-based vehicles to perform self-monitoring and self-reporting of their spatial positions and trajectories. Each vehicle autonomously tracks its own movement and communicates this data to the central system, eliminating the need for continuous centralized tracking of all vehicle parameters. This self-service approach reduces the computational burden on the central monitoring system while maintaining accurate collision risk detection capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
A monitoring system detects and mitigates traffic risks among a group of vehicles. The group of vehicles includes a ground-based vehicle (GBV), e.g. an automotive vehicle, and an air-based vehicle (ABV), e.g. a drone, which is operated to track a ground-based object (GBO), e.g. an unprotected road user or an animal. The monitoring system performs a method comprising: obtaining (301) predicted navigation data for the ground-based vehicle and the air-based vehicle, processing (302) the predicted navigation data to obtain one or more future locations of the ground based-object and to detect an upcoming spatial proximity between the ground-based object and the ground-based vehicle, and causing (305), upon detection of the upcoming spatial proximity, an alert signal to be provided to at least one of the ground-based object and the ground-based vehicle.