Waterborne Steering Assistance With Region-Specific Virtual Lines
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Solution Overview
Problem
Entry-level users operating waterborne vehicles face large blind spots, leading to unease due to insufficient visual assistance in navigating surroundings.
Innovation Solution
A steering assistance system that uses imagers to capture surroundings, processes images into a top view, and superimposes virtual lines on a display to indicate potential contact with objects based on predetermined conditions, enhancing awareness of potential collisions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If visual assistance is provided through display of processed images, then operator awareness of surroundings is improved, but device complexity increases due to multiple components (imager, processing unit, display control unit)
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the surrounding area into multiple regions (front, rear, left, right) and processes each region separately with region-specific virtual lines. This segmentation allows targeted visual assistance for each direction, improving operator awareness of specific areas while maintaining manageable system complexity through modular processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces virtual lines as intermediary visual elements between the imager capture and the operator's perception. These virtual lines (including outer and inner virtual lines) serve as mediators that translate raw image data into intuitive spatial relationships, enhancing awareness without requiring complex direct processing.
2Area of stationary object
If virtual lines are displayed for all regions, then comprehensive coverage of surroundings is achieved, but visual clutter increases making it harder to identify critical areas
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different display qualities to different regions by introducing outer virtual lines for certain regions and inner virtual lines for others. This local differentiation allows critical areas to be highlighted with additional visual cues while maintaining clarity in less critical regions, achieving comprehensive coverage without uniform visual clutter.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs asymmetric display strategies where outer virtual lines are displayed for some regions while inner virtual lines are displayed for other regions based on operational priorities. This asymmetric approach ensures that visually critical regions receive enhanced attention through additional line types, improving ease of operation by directing operator focus to important areas.
3Measurement precision
If multiple types of virtual lines are displayed (outer and inner), then precision of collision avoidance is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system calculates and prepares multiple types of virtual lines (outer and inner) in advance based on predetermined conditions before display. This preliminary processing allows the system to have collision avoidance information ready at different levels of detail, improving measurement precision for collision detection while managing processing complexity through pre-computation rather than real-time complex calculations.
Data Source
AI summary
Provided is a steering assistance system including a determination unit determining whether or not a positional relationship between an object around a waterborne moving body and the waterborne moving body satisfies a predetermined condition on the basis of a result of processing an image captured by an imager capturing an image around the waterborne moving body, and a display control unit causing a display to display an image in which one or more virtual lines are superimposed on the image if the predetermined condition is determined to be satisfied, in which each of the one or more virtual lines is associated with one of at least four or more regions set to the front, rear, left, and right of the waterborne moving body, the determination unit determines whether or not the predetermined condition is satisfied for each of the regions, and the display control unit causes the display not to display the virtual line corresponding to a specific region if the predetermined condition is satisfied in the specific region, and causes the display to display the virtual line corresponding to a non-specific region if the predetermined condition is satisfied in the non-specific region.