Route-specific services for connected automated vehicle highway systems

This application claims priority to U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 62/696,182, filed Jul. 10, 2018, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

The present technology relates to an intelligent road infrastructure system providing transportation management and operations and individual vehicle control for connected and automated vehicles (CAV), and, more particularly, to a system providing customized and route-specific operations, control, and services for CAVs according to user origin and destination requests.

Vehicles that are capable of sensing their environment and navigating without or with reduced human input (e.g., autonomous vehicles) are in development. At present, they are in experimental testing and not in widespread commercial use. Existing approaches require expensive and complicated on-board systems, making widespread implementation a substantial challenge.

In some embodiments, the technology provides systems and methods for customized and route-specific operations, control, and services for CAVs according to user origin and destination requests. In some embodiments, the technology is facilitated by CAVH system modules and methods. Specifically, the technology provides vehicles with individually customized information and real-time control instructions for the vehicle, e.g., to fulfill driving tasks (e.g., car following, lane changing, and route guidance). In some embodiments, the individually customized information and real-time control instructions for the vehicle are optimized for a specific route according to user origin and destination requests. In some embodiments, the individually customized information and real-time control instructions are provided for the vehicle to drive on, e.g., freeways and urban arterials.

In some embodiments, the technology comprises a connected automated vehicle highway system and methods and/or components thereof as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/628,331, filed Jun. 20, 2017 and U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 62/626,862, filed Feb. 6, 2018, 62/627,005, filed Feb. 6, 2018, 62/655,651, filed Apr. 10, 2018, and 62/669,215, filed May 9, 2018, the disclosure of each of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety (referred to herein as a CAVH system). In some embodiments, the technology comprises a cloud system as described in U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 62/691,391, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

Also provided herein are methods employing any of the systems described herein for the management of one or more aspects of traffic control. The methods include those processes undertaken by individual participants in the system (e.g., drivers, public or private local, regional, or national transportation facilitators, government agencies, etc.) as well as collective activities of one or more participants working in coordination or independently from each other.

Some portions of this description describe the embodiments of the technology in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information. These algorithmic descriptions and representations are commonly used by those skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance of their work effectively to others skilled in the art. These operations, while described functionally, computationally, or logically, are understood to be implemented by computer programs or equivalent electrical circuits, microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient at times, to refer to these arrangements of operations as modules, without loss of generality. The described operations and their associated modules may be embodied in software, firmware, hardware, or any combinations thereof.

Certain steps, operations, or processes described herein may be performed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules, alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, a software module is implemented with a computer program product comprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code, which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or all of the steps, operations, or processes described.

Embodiments of the technology may also relate to an apparatus for performing the operations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computing device selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a non-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium, or any type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, which may be coupled to a computer system bus. Furthermore, any computing systems referred to in the specification may include a single processor or may be architectures employing multiple processor designs for increased computing capability.

Additional embodiments will be apparent to persons skilled in the relevant art based on the teachings contained herein.

FIG. 1 presents an exemplary method for single route selection.

FIG. 2 presents an exemplary method for constructing a trip chain.

FIG. 3 presents an exemplary method for on-ramp conflict point management.

FIG. 4 presents an exemplary method for intersection conflict point management.

FIG. 5 presents an exemplary embodiment of a human-machine interface.

FIG. 6 presents an exemplary method for providing warnings to pedestrians and bicyclists of nearby vehicles.

FIG. 7 presents an exemplary method for single route adjustment.

FIG. 8 presents an exemplary method for tracking pedestrians and bicyclists.

FIG. 9 presents an exemplary method for lane combination selection.

FIG. 3 :

301 RSU: Roadside Unit 302 TCU/TCC: Traffic Control Center/Traffic Control Unit 303 IRIS: Intelligent Road Infrastructure System 304 Vehicle

FIG. 4 :

401 RSU: Roadside Unit 402 Traffic control devices 403 TCU/TCC: Traffic Control Center/Traffic Control Unit 404 Vehicle

FIG. 5 :

501 Voice command is recognized (e.g., destination, start, stop, accelerate, decelerate, and/or lane change). In some embodiments, the command is not executed if it conflicts with other commands and instructions. 502 Gesture (e.g., the direction of pointing and/or the position of the finger) is recognized and an output is produced. In some embodiments, the output is a direction corresponding to the direction of pointing and/or the position of the finger. 503 Eye-gaze (e.g., eye gaze direction and/or face orientation) is recognized and an output is produced. In some embodiments, the output is a direction corresponding to the directions of the eye gaze direction and/or face orientation. In some embodiments, eye gaze direction and/or face orientation is detected and provides an input of “yes” or “no” in reply to a prompt and/or question provided by the system. 504 Control button is used as a backup of controlling operation with a key.

505 & 506 . Touch screen. The touch screen is used for input and output. As input, the touch screen provides for text input and command input by touching. As output, the touch screen shows warning messages, explanation messages, and other information (e.g., velocity, location, map, and other output).

507 Speech synthesis use to render an output message in voice (e.g., when the driver is not able to look at the screen). 508 The output command to control the vehicle is sent to ROS and ROS sends the command to corresponding ECU via CAN bus. 509 A message for broadcast to another vehicle is sent and the message received from other vehicle is sent to the Command/Signal Listener (vehicle side). 510 & 511 RSU sends command to vehicle. Vehicle also sends information (location, velocity) back to RSU. 512 Control signal from vehicle is shown to human (e.g., fuel level, engine condition, engine temperature). 513 Data from sensing devices are input. 514 & 515 Input from and output for human. 516 & 517 Input from and output for vehicle.

FIG. 6 :

601 IRIS: Intelligent Road Infrastructure System 602 RSU: Road Side Unit 603 OBU: On Board Unit 604 Vehicle 605 Smart Phone 606 Pedestrian 607 Bicycle

FIG. 8 :

801 IRIS: Intelligent Road Infrastructure System 802 Non-IRIS: A road not served by or not part of an Intelligent Road Infrastructure System 803 RSU: Road Side Unit 804 Traffic Light 805 Bike Pavement Marks indicate the road is an IRIS road 806 Bike Pavement Marks indicate the road is a non-IRIS road 807 Pedestrian 808 Bicycle

To facilitate an understanding of the present technology, a number of terms and phrases are defined below. Additional definitions are set forth throughout the detailed description.

Throughout the specification and claims, the following terms take the meanings explicitly associated herein, unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. The phrase “in one embodiment” as used herein does not necessarily refer to the same embodiment, though it may. Furthermore, the phrase “in another embodiment” as used herein does not necessarily refer to a different embodiment, although it may. Thus, as described below, various embodiments of the invention may be readily combined, without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention.

In addition, as used herein, the term “or” is an inclusive “or” operator and is equivalent to the term “and/or” unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. The term “based on” is not exclusive and allows for being based on additional factors not described, unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. In addition, throughout the specification, the meaning of “a”, “an”, and “the” include plural references. The meaning of “in” includes “in” and “on.”

As used herein, the terms “about”, “approximately”, “substantially”, and “significantly” are understood by persons of ordinary skill in the art and will vary to some extent on the context in which they are used. If there are uses of these terms that are not clear to persons of ordinary skill in the art given the context in which they are used, “about” and “approximately” mean plus or minus less than or equal to 10% of the particular term and “substantially” and “significantly” mean plus or minus greater than 10% of the particular term.

As used herein, the suffix “-free” refers to an embodiment of the technology that omits the feature of the base root of the word to which “-free” is appended. That is, the term “X-free” as used herein means “without X”, where X is a feature of the technology omitted in the “X-free” technology. For example, a “sensing-free” method does not comprise a sensing step, a “controller-free” system does not comprise a controller, etc.

As used herein, the term “support” when used in reference to one or more components of the CAVH system providing support to and/or supporting one or more other components of the CAVH system refers to, e.g., exchange of information and/or data between components and/or levels of the CAVH system, sending and/or receiving instructions between components and/or levels of the CAVH system, and/or other interaction between components and/or levels of the CAVH system that provide functions such as information exchange, data transfer, messaging, and/or alerting.

In some embodiments, the technology provides systems and methods for a system providing customized and route-specific operations, control, and services for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) according to user origin and destination requests, based on connected automated vehicle highway (CAVH) systems which includes an intelligent road infrastructure system providing transportation management and operations and individual vehicle control for CAV.

FIG. 1 shows embodiments of a method for single route selection. Before the trip, the system collects user input data such as user information, preference, OD information (origin and destination information). In some embodiments, the user information is collected from a user interface and/or a personal device. In some embodiments, vehicle information is collected from OBU input such as vehicle type, oil level from SOC, CAVH OBU, etc. In some embodiments, the user and/or vehicle information is used to produce a user profile, vehicle profile, and/or OD information. Then, in some embodiments the CAVH system generates and computes these data with CAVH system and cloud data to compute both primary single route plan and alternative single route plans for user to choose.

FIG. 2 shows embodiments of system configured to perform a method of constructing a trip chain. The system starts with the user entering the origin and the destination. Then the user chooses whether the system generates the trip chain or the user enters the trip chain. If the user chooses the system to generate the trip chain, then the system generates the trip chain based on data. If the user chooses to enter the trip chain, then the system optimizes the entered trip chain.

FIG. 3 shows an example for on-ramp conflict point management. In 303 IRIS system, the 301 RSU senses the surrounding environment at ramp, e.g., 304 vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians; combines the instructions from 302 TCC/TCU; and detects movements of objects. Based on the collected information, the RSU predicts the future movement of these objects to identify possible conflict points at the ramp. Taking efficiency and safety into consideration, the control instructions are generated by RSU and sent to vehicles.

FIG. 4 shows an example for intersection conflict point management. At each intersection, the 401 RSU senses the surrounding environment at the intersection, e.g., 404 vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians; combines traffic control information from 402 traffic control devices and the instructions from 403 TCC/TCU; and detects movements of objects. Based on the collected information, the RSU predicts the future movement of these objects, especially pedestrians and bicycles, to identify possible conflict points at the intersection. Taking efficiency and safety into consideration, control instructions are generated by RSU and sent to vehicles.

FIG. 5 is a schematic drawing of a human-machine interface. In FIG. 5 , the Command/Signal Processor processes input from a human or a vehicle and sends an output command or message using, e.g., ROS, speech synthesis, touch screen, RSU. In some embodiments, the output or command is sent to other vehicles. Speaking, gestures, eye-gaze, and touch screen or control buttons provide inputs from the human. LIDAR/Radar/Camera, Info from the vehicle, RSU, and/or communication with Other vehicles provide inputs from the vehicle.

FIG. 6 shows an example of vehicle warnings produced to warn pedestrians and bicyclists. In 601 IRIS system/IRIS section, the 602 RSU senses the surrounding environment, e.g., 604 vehicles, 607 bicycles, and/or 606 pedestrians. In some embodiments, the RSU detects objects and the movements of objects. Based on this information, the RSU predicts the future movement of these objects to identify possible conflict points on the road.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a method for single route adjustment. The system collects current traffic status and user information. The system collects user input and user attribute data, such as the trip destination and user preference. The system generates the best routes based on user information and current traffic status. Current location and real-time traffic are updated to TOC and TCU in real-time. TOC/TCU provides the best routes for vehicle in real-time based on the traffic condition and passenger requests. OBU receives and updates the current routes.

FIG. 8 shows an example of tracking methods for pedestrians and bicyclists. In 801 IRIS system/IRIS section, the 803 RSU senses the surrounding environment, e.g., 807 pedestrians, 808 bicycles, and vehicles. In some embodiments, the RSU detects objects and the movements of the objects. Based on this information, RSU predicts the future movement of these objects to identify possible conflict points on the road. 804 Traffic lights adjust the traffic light cycle based on the RSU data. Pavement marks indicate bike lanes and segments of bike lanes that are served by the IRIS and that are not served by the IRIS.

FIG. 9 shows embodiments of a lane combination selection method and lane management system. In the lane management system, input data comprises origin and destination and the automation level of the vehicle. Then, the user decides whether the system selects the lane combination or the user selects the lane combination. After that, the lane combination is obtained and the system generates the trip chain based on the selected lane combination.