DE10230482A1 - Pre-crash warning - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to accident reporting methods for motor vehicles for the purpose of a quick and safe initiation of rescue measures, in particular apparatus and methods for sending an accident message in an accident situation of a motor vehicle, with the following steps: b) Settling (22) the accident message, DOLLAR A c) Detecting (30) whether the accident has not occurred, and DOLLAR A d) Settling (32) an accident cancellation message in the event that the accident has not occurred. Querying an extensive catalog of events and conditions for the purpose of recognizing (20) the suspected accident situation and recognizing (30) that no accident has occurred after the suspicion has been reported enables the practical suitability of the method.

Description

State of the art

• a) Erkennen einer „Unfallverdachtsituation",
• b) Absetzen der Unfallnachricht,
• c) Erkennen, ob der Unfall nicht eingetreten ist, und
• d) Absetzen einer Unfallstornierungsnachricht für den Fall, dass der Unfall nicht eingetreten ist.

The invention relates to accident reporting methods for motor vehicles for the purpose of quick and safe initiation of rescue measures, and is based on a method for sending an accident message in an accident situation of a motor vehicle, with the following steps:

• a) detection of an "accident suspected situation",
• b) sending the accident message,
• c) recognizing whether the accident has not occurred, and
• d) Sending an accident cancellation message in the event that the accident did not occur.

Such an accident reporting method with associated accident reporting device is in the DE 199 17 207 A1 disclosed. It is intended to ensure that an emergency call is sent to a rescue control center, even if the on-board electronics of a vehicle are destroyed by an accident. This is achieved in this publication in that an accident message is sent by radio immediately after an accident is detected, at a point in time shortly before the accident at which the radio device of the vehicle has not yet been affected. However, if it turns out that the accident could still be avoided, for example, by a skillful evasive maneuver by the driver or by other circumstances, a second message is sent, a so-called accident cancellation message, which is sent to the same rescue center, with the content that it an accident did not occur. Therefore, no measures need to be taken to initiate rescue operations in the event of cancellation.

A disadvantage of this in the prior art Technique known method is based on the criteria recognized an accident suspect situation and an accident message is set, are still too vague. So in that known in the prior art methods called sensors that Translational accelerations and / or an angular acceleration of the vehicle and / or changes in shape the vehicle body and / or braking and / or steering movements to capture. An evaluation unit is supposed to use the sensor signals reasonably set threshold decisions determine whether a critical Driving situation is given, and whether from a critical driving situation an accident has occurred.

This catalog of measures with which a suspected accident situation can be recognized is incomplete because it covers such Not cases in which the accident hits the driver completely unprepared and the driver no longer had an opportunity to brake or targeted evasive action to do.

Another disadvantage of this in the state The method known in the art is that the criteria on the basis of which the accident cancellation message is sent, are also defined too vaguely. Hence this procedure not practical.

Advantages of invention

With the measures of claim 1 A. achieved that a suspected accident situation was reliably recognized , and thus an accident report is reliably made before an accident occurs, and secondly, it is reliably recognized when the accident has not occurred, causing an accident cancellation message also in the same, more reliable Way can be discontinued. This will make serious shortcomings, which are present in the prior art cited at the beginning, closed and made the process practical.

By recognizing the suspected accident situation an extensive catalog of suspected conditions is queried and it It is sufficient that a single one of the suspected conditions is fulfilled, a wide variety of suspected accident situations can now occur reliable be recognized. The individual suspected states are programmatic linked with OR and are provided by a corresponding, according to the invention Processing program evaluated by program.

Another extensive catalog of measures is provided according to the invention to recognize whether the accident after sending an accident message has not yet occurred. By making this second catalog at states or criteria is also very extensive, and the individual Conditions too connected to each other in the processing program by an OR operation , the occurrence of a single criterion is sufficient to determine the Send accident cancellation message. This ensures that a rescue operation is never initiated for nothing, what in view of a foreseeable widespread use and the high Traffic density is an absolute must criterion in practice represents.

With the aforementioned state / event catalogs, the present invention takes into account the complexity of reality in modern road traffic with a high traffic density and the increasingly uncommon situations that arise, for example, because vehicles on the freeway overtake on the right, vehicles with relative high speed and relatively short distance over relatively long distances and successfully and fully automated prevents rescue operations from being mistakenly initiated. Threshold values, from which a suspected accident state is reported when it is exceeded or undershot, or where it is recognized that an accident if not occurred, according to the invention defined as a function of the vehicle speed and sensibly predefined for program processing.

According to the invention, it is therefore possible for the first time _; to avoid measures for the mechanical protection of the transmission systems in order to save costs and at the same time to guarantee a high level of safety and reliability of the process. The method according to the invention can advantageously be combined with the currently customary methods for reducing the consequences of accidents (collision mitigation) or for preventing accidents (collision avoidance) or for automatic distance sensing with automatic emergency brake triggering (ANB), which provide the necessary sensory information. The present invention provides a special supplement in the event that an accident cannot be prevented.

Advantageous refinements are in the subclaims Developments and improvements to the subject of Invention specified.

If in a more advantageous way According to the invention, an accident notification that does not require cancellation is discontinued, even if no suspected accident situation is identified was, but for it a clear accident event on the vehicle was sensed, is a new type of accident notification even in such cases additional Security created in which, contrary to expectations, the catalog of measures, as described in claim 1 fails.

drawings

Exemplary embodiments are based on the drawings of the invention explained.

Show it

1 a schematic overview of the components essential to the invention in a vehicle;

2 a schematic flow diagram with the most important processing steps of the method according to the invention when an accident occurs;

3 a representation after 2 when avoiding the accident.

description of embodiments

In the figures denote the same The same or functionally identical components.

In reference to 1 is the presence of the components shown there 10 . 12 . 14 and 16 a prerequisite for sending an emergency or help call from a vehicle. In detail is an accident detection unit 10 schematically shown, which is connected to a plurality of sensor devices, not shown, and their signals to a processing and control unit 12 can pass on.

The unit 10 To detect an accident, the present invention is used to detect the "suspected accident situation" mentioned above. In addition to other sensor devices, it is advantageously connected to a speedometer for the vehicle, a unit for determining the distance to the next vehicle in advance, possibly a unit for Determination of the distance to a following vehicle, a timepiece, in order to determine changes in distance per unit of time or to pass them on to the processing unit, with a “brake assistant” as contained in modern vehicles or to its sensors, to a pre-known device known from the prior art. crash sensor, preferably to all airbags present in the vehicle, further to lateral acceleration sensors or rollover sensors, if present in the vehicle, as well as to a sound sensor that can report an alarm signal if a noise level measured by him is above a predetermined threshold, as well as to the anti-lock braking system (ABS) and to a unit that monitors the intensity and the course of steering movements if such a unit is present in the vehicle. All of these sensor devices are equipped with corresponding cabling or radio connections known in the prior art and transmit their respective signals to the processing and control unit 12 ,

The unit 12 is preferably designed as a microcontroller in which a program is implemented which processes the incoming signals depending on their semantic content and, as described above, can generate an accident message.

Furthermore, the processing and control unit 12 with an optional navigation system 17 connected in order to be able to read the current location of the vehicle from there and to be able to include it in the accident report. Furthermore, the unity 12 operatively connected to a control element 18 for the driver that's a radio modem 14 activated to send out a signal in order to be able to manually send an accident cancellation message, if necessary.

The processing and control unit 12 is with a transmission unit 14 connected, for example the radio modem mentioned above, which transmits a signal to an auxiliary point via an antenna provided in the vehicle 16 dispatches.

In reference to 2 The sequence of events in the event of an accident explains the most important steps carried out according to the invention. The method runs in an endless loop, so that the current driving state can be continuously detected and processed again by the sensors mentioned above.

In a first step 20, the current Accident probability determined. For this purpose, the catalog of events specified in claim 1 or in one of the subclaims is checked to determine whether at least one of them applies or not. If one of the criteria applies, there is a suspected accident.

For example, the vehicle speed at 160 kilometers per hour, the distance sensor for the distance to the next Obstacle in the direction of travel reports a distance of only 30 meters and a subsequent distance measurement that is only 5/10 seconds later made, there is only a distance of 20 meters.

Then the processing and control unit determines 12 from the change in distance per unit of time of 10 meters decrease in distance within 0.5 seconds that the threshold value for changes in distance permissible for the speed of 160 kilometers per hour is far exceeded in this case, the braking distance still available is much too short, making a suspicious state for there is an accident.

Therefore, there is an accident suspicion situation, and an accident suspicion notification is sent to a pre-programmed address via radio modem 14 and antenna 16 discontinued, step 22 , Before the message is sent, a GPS location unit that may be present in the vehicle or, if present, a navigation system for the current location of the vehicle is advantageously queried and integrated into the message. Such a suspected accident situation would exist, for example, if a driver nods off at a relatively high speed on the highway and the vehicle rolls towards the vehicle in front without being braked. Before the impact, no other accident suspect criterion would be met positively, because no airbag has yet been deployed, all acceleration sensors have normal values, the sound sensor reports normal noise levels and there is no longer persistent ABS activity, or there are no atypical steering movements.

It should be noted that further measurement variables are used to calculate the braking distance can be. If a threshold is reached, the accident is relatively likely and is reported. For example, an additional rain sensor are queried, with its “rain No "signal the braking distance is automatically extended and a suspected accident situation even if there are less critical ones Distance change data is reported.

The rescue control center receives the accident message, step 24 , and the cancellation message is expected.

In case of 2 the vehicle would cause a rear-end collision, step 28 , and according to the invention no accident cancellation message would be sent via the radio modem. Because either the transmission device 14 destroyed by the accident itself, so that it becomes inoperable, or it remains intact, in which case a crash sensor which may be present in the vehicle would report a crash. If a crash is reported, no accident cancellation message is sent. If the cancellation message is absent for more than 10 seconds after receipt, for example, the location of the message is evaluated and the rescue workers themselves are alerted, step 26 ,

In 3 a similar course is described, but an accident can just be avoided. This can happen, for example, in that the driver who has briefly nodded off wakes up by a horn signal from another road user or by a warning signal from a distance sensor present in the vehicle and can just steer past the vehicle in front just in time.

• a) es liegt eine nicht-auffällige Geschwindigkeit des Fahrzeugs nach Ablauf einer vorgegebenen Unfallerwartungszeitspanne vor, innerhalb der der Unfall zu erwarten war, beispielsweise 5 Sekunden nach dem zu erwartenden Aufprall,
• b) der im Fahrzeug gegebenenfalls vorhandene Crash-Sensor meldet keinen Crash bis zum Ablauf der oben erwähnten Unfallerwartungszeitspanne oder
• c) das im Fahrzeug vorhandene, und mit der Verarbeitungseinheit 12 verbundene Bedienelement 18 zur manuellen Unfallstornierung wurde aktiviert, dass heißt der Fahrer hat die Stornierungsnachricht manuell ausgelöst innerhalb einer zweiten vorgegebenen Zeitspanne von beispielsweise 10 Sekunden.

In this case, the steps mentioned above would be 20 and 22 , such as 24 has also been carried out, which means that a suspected accident situation has been recognized and the accident message has already been sent. An accident could now be prevented, see step 30 , According to the invention, this is recognized in that at least one of the following conditions has been detected by the sensor devices present on the vehicle:

• a) there is a non-conspicuous speed of the vehicle after a predefined accident expectation period within which the accident was to be expected, for example 5 seconds after the impact to be expected,
• b) the crash sensor which may be present in the vehicle does not report a crash until the above-mentioned accident expectation period has expired or
• c) the existing in the vehicle, and with the processing unit 12 connected control element 18 for manual accident cancellation was activated, which means that the driver triggered the cancellation message manually within a second predetermined period of time, for example 10 seconds.

So an accident cancellation message is sent, step 32 , In this case, the rescue control center would have been since step 24 waiting for an accident cancellation message to be received from her. In fact, this cancellation message is then received before the expiry of a predetermined further period of time which is greater than the aforementioned, and no rescue operation is initiated.

In view of the high traffic density, the messages must be provided with an identity identifier in order to be able to assign pairs of suspicious messages and cancellation messages to one another. This applies at least to the Zu area of responsibility of a respective rescue center.

If the GSM mobile radio system used according to the invention the number of the mobile phone used can be used as an identifier be used.

For all other cases, in which there is no such identifier or if the access on the identifier is difficult (such as through encryption) the identifying identifier, for example, inexpensively a pseudo random number generator known in the prior art are generated, the bit sequence being, for example, a length of 16 or 24 bits. That would be the likelihood of being very random that of two different ones Vehicles the same identifier is generated. Furthermore, also the time in the system is also encoded. Furthermore the location can also be listed in the accident cancellation message, so that the vehicle location is also compared for the purpose of identity verification can.

Advantageously, before or at the start of the trip, the number of passengers in the vehicle information system provided according to the invention can be entered so that in the event of an accident, enough Ambulance can be sent.

Although the present invention based on a preferred embodiment as described above, it is not limited to this, but to diverse Modifiable.

Basically, can be used for the Radio frequency any suitable frequency can be used. Because of the nationwide availability however, the so-called Short Message Service (SMS) of the GSM system. Furthermore, you can also technologies such as GPRS or UMTS in an advantageous manner inventive method be involved. The processes can be expedited to ensure that the sending of the suspicious message is quick enough can happen.

Furthermore, in addition to the aforementioned sensors other measured variables such as the temperature or wiper activity and the combination thereof the current coefficient of friction of the road at least to determine roughly. Because from a temperature below 0 ° Celsius and one longer ongoing wipers let yourself infer snowfall and possibly smooth road conditions. This Results can can be used advantageously to the critical braking distance higher too than on dry roads, and to report the suspected accident situation accordingly earlier.

Finally, the features of the subclaims can essentially freely with each other and not through the one present in the claims Order can be combined, provided that they are independent of each other are.

Claims (3)

Method for sending an accident message in an accident situation of a motor vehicle, with the following steps: a) detection ( 20 ) an "accident suspected situation", b) stopping ( 22 ) the accident message, c) detection ( 30 ) whether the accident has not occurred, d) stopping ( 32 ) Of an accident cancellation message for the case that the accident has not occurred, characterized in that for detecting ( 20 ) the "suspected accident situation" one or more of the following suspect states or suspicious events is detected by sensor devices correspondingly present on the vehicle: e) simultaneous occurrence of the following events: aa) the vehicle speed is above a predetermined minimum speed, bb) a minimum distance which is predetermined to match the vehicle speed is undershot, and cc) the distance decreases per unit of time faster than a predetermined threshold value that matches the speed, f) an electronic “brake assistant” present in the vehicle is activated, g) a pre-crash sensor present in the vehicle reports “crash in prospect”, h ) an airbag present in the vehicle fires, i) at least one lateral acceleration sensor or rollover sensor reports a value above a predetermined minimum threshold value, k) a sound sensor reports a noise level above a predetermined threshold value, l) persistent ABS activity for longer than one day ne predetermined minimum period of time and at the same time untypical steering movements, and for recognition ( 30 ) that the accident did not occur, one or more of the following conditions or events are detected by sensor devices correspondingly present on the vehicle: m) presence of a non-conspicuous speed of the vehicle after a predefined accident expectation period within which the accident was to be expected, n) a crash sensor in the vehicle does not report a crash until the accident expectation period has expired, o) actuation of an operating element ( 18 ) to send the accident cancellation message. A method according to claim 1, characterized in that a non-cancellation needy Accident message is sent, even if no accident suspected situation, but for that a clear accident event on the vehicle was detected by sensors. Device for stopping an accident in an accident situation of a motor vehicle, containing equipment ( 10 . 12 . 14 . 16 . 17 . 18 ) to carry out the method according to one of the preceding claims.