Vehicle Control Using Steering Wheel Recognition on Curves
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle control systems fail to consider the movement of oncoming vehicles when determining collision avoidance maneuvers, leading to inefficiencies in protecting occupants during turns or curves.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle control device that acquires surrounding information, recognizes other vehicles, calculates the visual recognition ratio of their steering wheels to a perfect circle, and adjusts vehicle control accordingly to anticipate and respond to the movement of oncoming vehicles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the vehicle control system only monitors basic surrounding information without analyzing steering wheel orientation, then the system complexity is reduced, but the ability to predict and respond to oncoming vehicle movements deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces complex mechanical image processing systems with a simplified computational approach. Instead of using complex algorithms to analyze entire vehicle images, the system substitutes this with steering wheel detection and orientation analysis, which can be achieved through simpler image processing techniques that focus on specific geometric features (circular shapes with characteristic patterns).
Solution Approach 2:
The steering wheel serves as an intermediary object that provides indirect information about the driver's intent and vehicle movement direction. Rather than directly tracking the entire vehicle or making assumptions about driver behavior, the system uses the steering wheel orientation as a mediator to infer the driver's intended maneuver, enabling more accurate prediction of oncoming vehicle movements.
2Measurement precision
If the system calculates visual recognition ratio of steering wheels, then the precision of oncoming vehicle movement recognition is improved, but the processing time and computational load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential feature (steering wheel orientation) from the complete vehicle image, discarding unnecessary information. By focusing specifically on detecting circular shapes with steering wheel characteristics and calculating their orientation angles, the system achieves high measurement precision while minimizing processing time, as it does not need to analyze the entire vehicle or surrounding environment in detail.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs partial action by selectively processing only the steering wheel portion of the image rather than the entire scene. This partial processing approach allows the system to achieve sufficient precision for collision avoidance by concentrating computational resources on the most critical element (steering wheel orientation) while accepting that not all image details are processed.
3Reliability
If the vehicle control system responds to all detected vehicles with maximum caution, then occupant safety is improved, but unnecessary control actions and reduced traffic flow efficiency occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating the level of caution based on the specific characteristics of each detected vehicle. Instead of uniformly applying maximum caution to all vehicles, the system analyzes the steering wheel orientation of each oncoming vehicle individually and applies control measures only when the orientation indicates a potential collision risk. This localized approach ensures high safety for genuine threats while maintaining normal traffic flow for vehicles that do not pose a risk.
Data Source
AI summary
A vehicle control device that controls a vehicle, the vehicle control device comprising: an acquisition unit configured to acquire surrounding information of the vehicle; a recognition unit configured to recognize another vehicle traveling in surroundings of the vehicle, based on the surrounding information; a calculation unit configured to calculate a visual recognition ratio of a steering wheel of the other vehicle to a perfect circle; and a control unit configured to control the vehicle, based on the visual recognition ratio.