Vehicle Safety Arbitration Unit for Coordinated Active and Passive Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current vehicle safety systems lack integration of active and passive safety measures, leading to inefficient accident prevention and potential for erroneous interventions that do not align with the driver's intentions, especially in complex driving situations.
Innovation Solution
An electronic control system that includes a driver request module for determining pedal movements and brake pressure, a risk calculator for assessing danger based on vehicle, ambience, and driver data, and an arbitration unit to control actuators, allowing for graded interventions that support or override the driver's actions to optimize safety.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If active and passive safety systems are developed separately and independently, then each system can be optimized individually, but the overall safety potential is not fully utilized and systems lack coordination
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges active safety systems (ABS, ESP, ACC) and passive safety systems (airbags, seatbelt tensioners) into a unified networked control system. The risk calculator and arbitration unit coordinate interventions across both active and passive safety systems, ensuring they work together synergistically rather than independently, thereby fully utilizing the overall safety potential.
Solution Approach 2:
The arbitration unit serves as a universal control component that manages multiple safety systems (brake system, airbag system, seatbelt tensioning device) through a single coordinated interface. It evaluates risk potentials and determines appropriate interventions across different safety systems, providing multi-functional control that reduces overall system complexity despite the number of integrated subsystems.
2Reliability
If automated safety systems intervene independently without considering driver intent, then accident prevention capability is enhanced, but erroneous interventions may occur that do not align with driver intentions
Solution Approach 1:
The driver request module continuously monitors driver inputs (accelerator pedal position, brake pedal activation) and provides feedback to the arbitration unit. The arbitration unit uses this feedback to assess driver intent and adjust automated safety interventions accordingly, ensuring they align with driver intentions while maintaining accident prevention capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The arbitration unit dynamically adjusts the level and type of safety interventions based on real-time assessment of driver intent and risk potential. Rather than applying fixed automated responses, the system adapts its control strategy to match driver behavior patterns, enhancing both accident prevention and driver-system coordination.
3Productivity
If multiple safety systems are interconnected in a network with comprehensive data sharing, then the entire potential of individual systems is fully utilized, but system complexity and data processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The risk calculator serves as an intermediary component that receives data from multiple sensors and safety systems, processes this information centrally, and generates coordinated control signals. This mediator architecture allows comprehensive data sharing and full utilization of safety system potential while managing network complexity through a centralized processing approach.
Solution Approach 2:
The control system is segmented into distinct functional modules (driver request module, risk calculator, arbitration unit, actuator control) that can be developed, tested, and maintained independently. This modular segmentation reduces overall network integration complexity while enabling full utilization of safety system potential through standardized interfaces between modules.
4Reliability
If graded controlling interventions are implemented with arbitration based on driver request, then erroneous interventions are reduced, but the response time and complexity of control logic increase
Solution Approach 1:
The driver request module continuously monitors and pre-processes driver input signals (accelerator pedal position, brake pedal status) before safety interventions are needed. The arbitration unit maintains ready-assessment of driver intent, allowing it to make rapid control decisions when risk situations arise, thereby reducing actual response time despite complex graded intervention logic.
Data Source
AI summary
In a method for determining at least one, preferably however several driver-independent interventions in a vehicle system, a risk calculator is used, whose input is supplied with predetermined vehicle data, ambience data, current vehicle and driver data, occupant data or data of persons outside the vehicle, or similar data. The risk calculator issues an evaluation of the risk situation of the vehicle and its occupants or the persons outside the vehicle based on said data and, in accordance with the evaluation and optional additional criteria or weightings, outputs driving signals controlling actuators that modify or trigger the driving behavior of the vehicle and/or the occupant protection system and/or protection means for other traffic participants (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) in such a way that maximum protection is obtained for the persons and the vehicle according to a priority control.