Vehicle Control System for Emergency Stop Area Selection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing autonomous driving systems face challenges in determining an optimal target position for a vehicle to safely evacuate in emergency situations, as the initially selected position may become unsuitable due to changing environmental conditions by the time the vehicle reaches it.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle control system that includes a control unit, occupant monitoring device, and external environment recognition device, which computes cumulative travel risk and stop risk for multiple available stop areas, allowing the vehicle to sequentially evaluate and select a final stop area based on these risks, ensuring safe and reliable stopping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If the vehicle decides a target position immediately upon detecting the need to evacuate, then the decision-making speed is improved, but the reliability of the stop position deteriorates because the position may become unsuitable by the time the vehicle reaches it
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary risk assessment and environmental evaluation for multiple potential stop areas before the vehicle actually travels to them. By pre-computing cumulative travel risks and stop risks for several candidate positions, the system prepares multiple contingency options in advance, allowing it to quickly select from pre-evaluated positions when evacuation is needed, thus maintaining both speed and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically re-evaluates stop area suitability based on real-time environmental conditions detected by sensors. As the vehicle approaches selected stop areas, the control unit continuously monitors changes in the environment and can adjust the selection if conditions deteriorate. This dynamic adaptation ensures that the final stop position remains suitable even as conditions change during travel.
2Reliability
If the vehicle selects multiple stop areas and evaluates cumulative travel risk, then the reliability of stopping is improved, but the device complexity increases due to multiple risk computations
Solution Approach 1:
The risk assessment system is segmented into two distinct computational components: cumulative travel risk (evaluating hazards along the path to each stop area) and stop risk (evaluating hazards at the stop area itself). This segmentation allows the control unit to independently compute and compare different types of risks for multiple candidate positions, improving reliability through comprehensive evaluation while maintaining manageable system complexity through modular computation.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the vehicle continuously monitors environmental conditions and re-evaluates stop areas, then the adaptability to changing conditions is improved, but the loss of time increases due to continuous assessment
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements periodic re-evaluation of stop areas at predetermined intervals or when specific triggering conditions occur (such as detecting a preceding vehicle or significant environmental changes). Rather than continuously monitoring all parameters, the control unit periodically updates risk assessments based on sensor data, maintaining adaptability to changing conditions while minimizing time loss through event-driven rather than continuous evaluation.
Data Source
AI summary
In a vehicle control system, a control unit of the vehicle control system executes a stop process by which the vehicle is parked in a prescribed stop area when it is detected that the control unit or the driver has become incapable of properly maintaining a traveling state of the vehicle. In the stop process, the control unit determines a plurality of available stop areas according to the vehicle surroundings and map information, and computes, for each available stop area, a cumulative travel risk obtained by accumulating a travel risk involved in traveling from a position of the vehicle when the stop process is initiated to each available stop area and a stop risk in stopping in each available stop area, the control unit determining a final stop area by comparing the cumulative travel risk with the stop risk in each available stop area sequentially from the nearest one.