Patents Examined by Courtney Heinle
  • Patent number: 8825228
    Abstract: A method of assisting the piloting of an aircraft (1) comprising a first rotor (5) having a plurality of first blades (6) with a first variable collective pitch, and a second rotor (7) having a plurality of second blades (8) with a second variable collective pitch. According to the method, a computer determines a power limit curve (70) and displays said limit curve (70) in a diagram (60) to inform the pilot of the first and second collective pitch margins available before reaching the limits of at least one operating rating of the power plant of the aircraft.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2012
    Date of Patent: September 2, 2014
    Assignee: Airbus Helicopters
    Inventors: Alban Corpron, Stéphane Petit
  • Patent number: 8825332
    Abstract: A method is described for stabilizing a vehicle during a braking maneuver, in which the vehicle is steered at the same time. In order to bring the vehicle back again into a controlled state as rapidly as possible, the driving state is monitored with respect to a driving situation in which the wheel slip of the front wheels is greater than a specified threshold value, and besides that, a steering requirement is present. If such a driving situation has been detected, the brake pressure is first reduced at a first front wheel and after that at a second front wheel on the other side of the vehicle, until the wheel start-up pressure is reached. Because of that, the first wheel starts up substantially faster than in response to a simultaneous pressure reduction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 25, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 2, 2014
    Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
    Inventors: Philipp Frueh, Rainer Brueggemann
  • Patent number: 8812174
    Abstract: A controller system for vehicle which has a plurality of driving modes which influence driving feeling, and performs selection from the driving modes and the regulation by inputs from a selecting switch, a forward sequence regulating switch, and a reverse sequence regulating switch. For each input from the selecting switch, changing to the driving mode according to a predetermined normal order. For each input from each of the regulating switches, the current controlled step is changed in a predetermined tendency direction. In a state where the controlled step reaches a final step, the state of the final step is maintained even when the same regulating signal is inputted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 24, 2012
    Date of Patent: August 19, 2014
    Assignee: Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Takeru Ohshima, Satoshi Takaya, Ichiro Umetani
  • Patent number: 8798887
    Abstract: A vehicle system and method that estimates or approximates the mass of a vehicle so that a more accurate vehicle mass estimate can be made available to other vehicle systems, such as an adaptive cruise control (ACC) system or an automated lane change (LCX) system. In an exemplary embodiment, the method compares an actual acceleration of the vehicle to an expected acceleration while the vehicle is under the control of an automated acceleration event. The difference between these two acceleration values, along with other potential input, may then be used to approximate the actual mass of the vehicle in a way that takes into account items such as passengers, cargo, fuel, etc. Once an accurate vehicle mass estimate is generated, the method may make this estimate available to other vehicle components, devices, modules, systems, etc. so that their performance can be improved.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 5, 2014
    Assignee: GM Global Technology Operations LLC
    Inventors: James N. Nickolaou, Leonard J. Leshinsky, Jr.
  • Patent number: 8762003
    Abstract: A leaning vehicle has a frame pivotally connected to the lower end of a shock tower, the pivotal connection defining a frame leaning axis wherein the frame is adapted to lean to a right side and to a left side relative to the shock tower about the frame leaning axis. The leaning vehicle includes an actuator operatively connected to the frame and to the shock tower which is adapted to impart a leaning motion to the frame relative to the shock tower about the frame leaning axis.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 16, 2009
    Date of Patent: June 24, 2014
    Assignee: Bombardier Recreational Products Inc.
    Inventor: Daniel Mercier
  • Patent number: 8762015
    Abstract: An automatic shift apparatus including a transmission; a vehicle speed acquisition unit; a gear speed acquisition unit that acquires a gear speed of the transmission; a unit that sets, based on a vehicle speed, a minimum allowable gear speed at which a rotation speed of an input shaft of the transmission is equal to or lower than a predetermined rotation speed and which has a highest gear ratio among a plurality of gear speeds; and a unit that determines that the gear speed is abnormal if the gear speed has a higher gear ratio than the minimum allowable gear speed due to a change in the gear speed, and not determining that the gear speed is abnormal if the gear speed has a higher gear ratio than the minimum allowable gear speed due to a change in the minimum allowable gear speed that is set.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 24, 2014
    Assignee: Aisin Aw Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Ryo Takada, Shoji Fushimi, Tsunekazu Inakura, Masatoshi Taguchi
  • Patent number: 8744643
    Abstract: A vehicle controller which can perform appropriate control even when an acceleration sensor is mounted in a movable portion of a vehicle. The vehicle controller includes an acceleration sensor attached to a cabin movable around a shaft, an open/closed state detection section which detects the open/closed state of the cabin, and a correction section which corrects the output value of the acceleration sensor. When the open/closed state detection section detects that the cabin is opened and then closed, the correction section performs correction. When the acceleration sensor is provided in the cabin serving as a movable portion, the inclination of the acceleration sensor may differ slightly before and after the cabin is opened.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 18, 2009
    Date of Patent: June 3, 2014
    Assignee: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Shinsuke Yamamoto
  • Patent number: 8731811
    Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for completing and displaying a taxi clearance for an aircraft at an airport. One exemplary method involves receiving an input taxi clearance including a first taxi path of a plurality of taxi paths at the airport and a second taxi path of the plurality of taxi paths that succeeds the first taxi path in the input taxi clearance, and determining a plurality of possible taxi routes between the first taxi path and the second taxi path. The method continues by identifying an optimal taxi route from among the plurality of possible taxi routes, and graphically indicating that the taxi clearance for the aircraft includes the optimal taxi route between the first taxi path and the second taxi path.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 20, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
    Inventors: Jan Bilek, Ondrej Pokorny, Tomas Marczi
  • Patent number: 8731765
    Abstract: A method for operating a powertrain system including a torque machine mechanically coupled to an internal combustion engine includes, upon detecting a pending fault associated with a power switch configured to control power flow to the torque machine, disabling torque output from the torque machine and executing retry events. The retry events are iteratively executed with a debounce time period preceding each retry event. Presence of a fault associated with the power switch is detected when a quantity of the retry events during a time window exceeds a threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: GM Global Technology Operations LLC
    Inventors: Wei D. Wang, Bon Ho Bae, Reynaldo Arturo Suazo Zepeda, Satish Godavarthy
  • Patent number: 8725359
    Abstract: A traction control device includes: rotation speed detectors provided to wheels; a control-start determiner that determines whether or not to control a braking mechanism and a differential adjusting mechanism based on rotation speeds; a braking mechanism controller that controls the braking mechanism based on a result of the determination of the control-start determiner; and a differential adjusting mechanism controller that controls the differential adjusting mechanism based on the result of the determination of the control-start determiner, in which the control-start determiner includes: a right-left-wheel rotation speed difference calculating section; a front-rear-wheel rotation speed difference calculating section; and a control-start determining section that determines whether or not to start controlling at least one of the braking mechanism and the differential adjusting mechanism when one of rotation speed differences reaches or exceeds a predetermined threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 25, 2009
    Date of Patent: May 13, 2014
    Assignee: Komatsu Ltd.
    Inventors: Koji Uematsu, Kazuhiro Hatake, Yuya Kusumoto
  • Patent number: 8718882
    Abstract: A method of controlling a transmission brake that is actuated by inlet and outlet valves. For determining when to transmit a disengagement signal for opening the outlet valve, the current input and output speeds are determined and the respective gradients of these speeds are calculated. Variation of the input speed, during the disengagement of the brake, is determined as a function of the input gradient, the optimum time for reaching the synchronous speed, during brake disengagement, is determined from the input speed variation as a function of the output gradient, and the time interval until transmission of the disengagement signal is determined as a function of the current input and output speeds and their gradients, by a back-calculation from the time when the synchronous speed is reached, taking a disengagement dead time of the brake, between transmitting the disengagement signal and start of disengagement, into account.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 14, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 6, 2014
    Assignee: ZF Friedrichshafen AG
    Inventor: Marcus Gansohr
  • Patent number: 8700245
    Abstract: In a motor vehicle having two, in particular electrical, drives, a partial torque is in each case intended to be assigned to the individual drives from a demanded total torque, to be precise taking account of the energy efficiency on the one hand and the stability of the vehicle on the other hand. A first controller is responsible for taking account of the energy efficiency, and predetermines a bandwidth of possible partial torques for an individual drive. This bandwidth may be restricted by a second controller, when driving stability requires this. The second controller is coupled to appropriate sensors (yaw rate sensor, lateral acceleration sensor, longitudinal acceleration sensor) and knows the steering angle ?. In the course of interchanging data signals with a first control device, the partial torques are defined with the involvement of the second control device, for which purpose the first control device emits control commands.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 29, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 15, 2014
    Assignee: Audi AG
    Inventors: Karl-Heinz Meitinger, Michael Wein, Sebastian Strasser, Martin Werner
  • Patent number: 8645013
    Abstract: A hybrid powertrain includes an engine and electric motors configured to transfer torque through a transmission. A method for controlling the hybrid powertrain includes determining a transition window associated with torque output of one of the electric motors coupled to an element of the transmission. A noise reduction control scheme is executed when the torque output of the one of the electric motors coupled to the element of the transmission is within the transition window.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 21, 2011
    Date of Patent: February 4, 2014
    Assignee: GM Global Technology Operations LLC
    Inventors: Jy-Jen F. Sah, Lan Wang, John A. Anderson, James Sydenstricker
  • Patent number: 8600585
    Abstract: A computerized method for performing countermeasure transmission of decoy vehicle data. The method can include receiving a vehicle management data message from one of a plurality of vehicle management system components. The vehicle management data message can have data indicating at least one destination component, and the at least one destination component can include a civil transponder. The method can include transforming said vehicle management data message into a decoy vehicle management data message and transmitting the decoy flight management data message to at least one of the at least one destination component(s).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 3, 2013
    Assignee: Lockheed Martin Corporation
    Inventors: Lester J. Pangilinan, John Olsen