PMV Radar and Sonar Detection for Hazardous Road Surfaces
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Solution Overview
Problem
Commercial personal mobile vehicles (PMVs) like bicycles and scooters pose safety issues due to their lightweight and high-speed nature, leading to potential collisions with obstacles or pedestrians, and navigating hazardous road surfaces, which existing technologies like cameras struggle to address effectively, especially concerning computational overhead and privacy concerns.
Innovation Solution
Equipping PMVs with radar sensors that emit electromagnetic waves to detect road surface characteristics and classify them, determining if they are hazardous, and alerting the rider through a processing unit and display, while also sharing information with a fleet management system to enhance road awareness and safety.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If cameras are used to detect road surface characteristics, then visual information can be obtained, but computational overhead increases and privacy concerns arise
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces camera-based optical detection with radar-based electromagnetic wave detection. The radar sensor emits electromagnetic waves and analyzes reflections to determine road surface characteristics, eliminating the need for complex image processing algorithms while maintaining detection capability and reducing computational overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces radar waves as an intermediary medium to detect road surface characteristics. Instead of directly processing visual information from cameras, the system uses electromagnetic wave reflections as an intermediary to obtain road surface data, thereby avoiding privacy concerns associated with camera surveillance.
2Speed
If radar sensors are used to detect road surface characteristics, then real-time detection is achieved, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates the radar sensor into the existing PMV platform, making it a universal component that serves multiple functions: detecting road surface characteristics, identifying hazardous conditions, and providing real-time alerts. This multi-functionality approach adds detection capability without proportionally increasing overall system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The radar sensor system is designed to autonomously detect road surface characteristics and generate alerts without requiring complex external processing systems. The processing unit within the PMV directly analyzes radar reflections and determines hazardous conditions, enabling the system to serve itself and reducing overall system complexity.
3Reliability
If the PMV alerts the rider about hazardous road surfaces, then safety is improved, but the rider may experience increased distraction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent provides localized and specific alerts about hazardous road surfaces only in the immediate vicinity of the PMV. The system detects and alerts about specific road surface conditions (wet, icy, uneven) at specific locations, rather than providing continuous or excessive notifications, thereby maintaining rider awareness without causing distraction.
Solution Approach 2:
The radar system rapidly detects and processes road surface conditions, providing quick alerts that allow the rider to quickly respond and move through hazardous areas. The fast detection and alert mechanism enables the rider to skip over dangerous zones without prolonged exposure or excessive attention demands.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Improves travel safety by providing real-time alerts for vulnerable road users and hazardous road surfaces, reducing the risk of accidents and compliance with local regulations, and enhancing rider awareness without violating privacy.
Implementation Method 1
The radar sensor is configured to (i) emit an electromagnetic wave signal towards an environment external to the PMV, and (ii) receive a reflection pattern indicating a characteristic of the road surface
Implementation Method 2
receive a reflection pattern indicating a characteristic of the road surface
Data Source
AI summary
Commercial personal mobile vehicles (PMVs) managed by a fleet management system are sometimes equipped with a radar sensor to detect objects in an environment external to the PMVs. Specifically, the PMV may be equipped with a variety of sensors, such as a radar, a sonar sensor, a (optional) camera, an inertia measurement unit (IMU), and/or the like. The combination of a radar reflection signal and a sonar signal may provide measurements of characteristics such as a Doppler velocity and height information of a nearby object, which may be input to a machine learning classifier to determine the probability that the nearby object is a VRU. For another example, the reflection pattern from radar and ultrasonic may be used to input to a machine learning classifier to determine a type of the road surface, e.g., an asphalt road surface, a concrete sidewalk surface, a wet-grass lawn surface, and/or the like.