Vehicle Hazard Light Control During Automatic Stop
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing emergency stop systems for vehicles cause awkward user experiences due to unintended operation of hazard lights during automatic stop processes, leading to inconvenience and discomfort for drivers and passengers.
Innovation Solution
An emergency stop system incorporating a momentary hazard switch that allows users to easily toggle hazard lights between flashing and off states, separate from automatic stop control, and includes a driving operation detector to reflect user intention and terminate automatic stop control when driving resumes, ensuring hazard lights operate as expected.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If hazard lights are automatically controlled to flash during automatic stop control, then nearby vehicles are alerted to the emergency stop condition, but the user experiences awkward feeling and inconvenience
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the hazard light control into two independent modes: automatic control mode (when automatic stop control is active) and manual control mode (when automatic stop control is inactive). This segmentation allows the system to provide different control behaviors for different operational contexts, resolving the contradiction by enabling automatic warning function only when appropriate, while avoiding user discomfort during manual operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic switching between automatic and manual control modes based on the operational state of the automatic stop control. The control unit dynamically adjusts the hazard light behavior: enabling automatic flashing during automatic stop control to provide emergency warning, and disabling automatic flashing during manual operation to prevent user discomfort. This dynamic adaptation resolves the contradiction by making the system behavior context-dependent.
2Stability of the object's composition
If an alternate switch is used for hazard lights, then the switch can be held in operating state to maintain hazard light flashing, but the user must press the switch twice to turn off lights during automatic stop control
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the hazard light control function from the alternate switch during automatic stop control operation. When automatic stop control is active, the control unit takes over hazard light control completely, ignoring alternate switch operations. This extraction allows the system to maintain stable hazard light flashing (improving state maintenance) while eliminating the need for users to perform complex double-press operations (improving ease of operation).
Data Source
AI summary
An emergency stop system includes a hazard switch that is a momentary switch, an automatic stop controller that performs automatic stop control for causing a vehicle to automatically stop when a predetermined condition is met, and a hazard light controller that controls hazard lights. While automatic stop control is not being performed, the hazard light controller switches the hazard lights between a flashing state and a turned-off state each time a user presses the hazard switch. The hazard light controller brings the hazard lights into the flashing state upon start of the automatic stop control, and turns off the hazard lights (i.e., transitions the hazard lights to the turned-off state) upon depression of the hazard switch while the hazard lights are flashing during execution of the automatic stop control.