Patents Examined by Calvin Cheung
  • Patent number: 11187739
    Abstract: Systems and methods for determining vehicle operational status in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. In one embodiment, a vehicle event detection device includes a low pass filter configured to sense a vehicle voltage and filter the sensed voltage to remove noise, and a plurality of first high pass filter configured to detect either a drop or a rise in the vehicle voltage and several low power comparators configured to determine whether the drop or rise in voltage is indicative of a vehicle event.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 28, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2021
    Assignee: CalAmp Corp.
    Inventor: David B. Patton
  • Patent number: 11190903
    Abstract: A method for operating a telematics system that determines the current geographic position of a user device with respect to a static boundary separating a first zone and a second zone, determines at least one first parameter, determines a dynamic boundary separating the first zone and the second zone, based on the course of the static boundary, the current geographic position and the at least one first parameter, determines whether the current position of the user device is located in the first zone or the second zone based on the course of the dynamic boundary, and activates or deactivates one or more telematics services depending on the zone the user device is located in.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 16, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2021
    Assignee: Harman Becker Automotive Systems GmbH
    Inventors: Teodora Guenkova-Luy, Martin Clauss, Andreas Klimke, Oliver Abt
  • Patent number: 11188079
    Abstract: Example embodiments include a motion mechanism that can be coupled between the main body of an unmanned movable object and the optoelectronic scanning module. The motion mechanism can include, e.g., a spinning device and a tilting device. The spinning device can be operable to rotate the scanning module relative to the main body about a spin axis. The tilting device can be operable, e.g., in response to a tilt angle input, to rotate the scanning module about an additional axis that is transverse to the spin axis. Further example embodiments include an orientation sensor installed on the main body of the unmanned movable object. Some embodiments also provide a controller that is configured to receive an orientation signal from the orientation sensor and, based at least in part on the orientation signal, determine a tilt value for the tilt angle input for the tilting device in the motion mechanism.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 22, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2021
    Assignee: SZ DJI TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Jiebin Xie, Wei Ren, Zhipeng Zhan
  • Patent number: 11189113
    Abstract: A forward collision avoidance assist performance inspection system, and a method is provided. A system for inspecting Forward Collision Avoidance Assist (FCA) performance includes: an OBD, which is connected with the vehicle through Controller Area Network (CAN) communication and receives driving information according to an operation; and an inspection terminal, which is mounted on the vehicle, is connected with the OBD through short range wireless communication, measures vehicle location information on a road map by utilizing a differential Global Positioning System (GPS) during a driving test, determines whether an FCA function is operated when the vehicle passes a normal braking gate spaced apart from an obstacle set on the road map in a predetermined distance, and applies forced brake control information through the OBD and stops the vehicle when the vehicle passes a forced braking gate when the FCA function of the vehicle is not operated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 21, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2021
    Assignees: HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, KIA MOTORS CORPORATION
    Inventors: Jae Cheol Jeong, TaeJong Kim
  • Patent number: 11188098
    Abstract: A method for continuously conveying agricultural product from an agricultural vehicle to an agricultural product storage tank includes receiving a signal at an autonomous grain cart indicating that another autonomous grain cart is moving to the agricultural product storage tank from the agricultural vehicle. The method also includes determining an expected location of the agricultural vehicle based on a harvesting map for the agricultural vehicle. The method further includes determining a route to the expected location of the agricultural vehicle based on the expected location of the agricultural vehicle and the location of the autonomous grain cart. The method also includes controlling the autonomous grain cart based on the route to the expected location of the agricultural vehicle after the signal indicating that the other autonomous grain cart is moving to the agricultural product storage tank from the agricultural vehicle is received.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 23, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2021
    Assignee: CNH Industrial America LLC
    Inventors: Pinakin S. Desai, Peter Joseph Zerillo, Stephen Michael Faivre, Nathan Taylor, Kevin David Monk, David W. Larson
  • Patent number: 11183059
    Abstract: According to one embodiment, in response to a request to park an ADV into a parking lot, a remote server is accessed over a network (e.g., a VX2 link) to obtain a list of parking spaces that appear to be available in the parking lot. Based on the list of available parking spaces and the map associated with the parking lot, a route is generated to navigate through at least the available parking spaces. The ADV is driven according to the route to locate at least one of the available parking spaces and to park the ADV into the located available parking space. The centralized server is configured to periodically receive signals from a number of parking lots indicating which of the parking spaces of the parking lots are apparently available.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 23, 2021
    Assignee: BAIDU USA LLC
    Inventors: Jinyun Zhou, Runxin He, Qi Luo, Jinghao Miao, Jiangtao Hu, Yu Wang, Jiaxuan Xu, Shu Jiang
  • Patent number: 11173832
    Abstract: An illumination system includes an illumination control unit which is configured to change the illumination state of each of a left-side illumination unit (40L), a left-side auxiliary illumination unit (42L), a right-side illumination unit (40R), and a right-side auxiliary illumination unit (42R). The illumination control unit is configured to change the illumination state of the left-side illumination unit (40L) when a vehicle (1) has detected a pedestrian (P). The illumination control unit is configured to change the illumination state of the left-side auxiliary illumination unit (42L) according to the speed of the vehicle (1). The illumination control unit is configured to change the illumination state of each of light emission segments (43L) of the left-side illumination unit (40L) and each of light emission segments (44L) of the left-side auxiliary illumination unit (42L).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 11, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 16, 2021
    Assignee: KOITO MANUFACTURING CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Naoki Tatara, Takeshi Masuda, Toshihiro Okamura
  • Patent number: 11173910
    Abstract: A lane change controller, a system including the same, and a method thereof are provided. The lane change controller includes a processor configured to determine whether it is possible for a vehicle to perform a lane change depending on a road condition, based on information about surrounding circumstances, a storage storing the result of determining whether it is possible to perform the lane change, the result being determined by the processor, and a display device configured to display the result of determining whether it is possible to perform the lane change.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 6, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 16, 2021
    Assignees: HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, KIA MOTORS CORPORATION
    Inventors: Jun Soo Kim, Jin Su Jeong, Jae Yong Jeon
  • Patent number: 11169545
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems and methods for distributing a plurality of drones to form an aerial image. The systems and methods may include: receiving, at a computing device comprising a processor, location data and drone data; distributing, by the computing device, a plurality of drones based on the aspects of an aerial image such that, during flight, the plurality of drones form the aerial image; and exporting, by the computing device, coordinates for each of the plurality of drones. The location data may define aspects of the aerial image to be formed by the plurality of drones. The drone data may include a number of drones within the plurality of drones. The coordinate for each of the plurality of drones may define a location for a respective drone within the aerial image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventors: Tobias Gurdan, Daniel Gurdan
  • Patent number: 11167772
    Abstract: Systems and methods for disabling autonomous vehicle input devices are provided. In one example embodiment, a computer implemented method includes identifying an operating mode of an autonomous vehicle. The method includes determining one or more vehicle input devices to be disabled based at least in part on the operating mode of the autonomous vehicle. The vehicle input devices are located onboard the autonomous vehicle. The method includes disabling the one or more vehicle input devices based at least in part on the identified operating mode of the autonomous vehicle such that an input by a user with respect to the one or more vehicle input devices does not affect an operation of the autonomous vehicle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 5, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignees: UATC, LLC, Volvo Car Corporation
    Inventors: Scott C. Poeppel, Nicholas G. Letwin, Sean J. Kelly, Hans Jonas Nilsson, Carl Henrick Mathias Westlund
  • Patent number: 11169513
    Abstract: Disclosed are devices, systems and methods for the operational testing on autonomous vehicles. One exemplary method includes configuring a primary vehicular model with an algorithm, calculating one or more trajectories for each of one or more secondary vehicular models that exclude the algorithm, configuring the one or more secondary vehicular models with a corresponding trajectory of the one or more trajectories, generating an updated algorithm based on running a simulation of the primary vehicular model interacting with the one or more secondary vehicular models that conform to the corresponding trajectory in the simulation, and integrating the updated algorithm into an algorithmic unit of the autonomous vehicle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 29, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignee: TUSIMPLE, INC.
    Inventors: Zehua Huang, Yixin Yang
  • Patent number: 11163303
    Abstract: This disclosure presents an assisted driving vehicle system, including autonomous, semi-autonomous, and technology assisted vehicles, that can share sensor data among two or more controllers. A sensor can have one communication channel to a controller, thereby saving cabling and circuitry costs. The data from the sensor can be sent from one controller to another controller to enable redundancy and backup in case of a system failure. In another embodiment, sensor data from more than one sensor can be aggregated at one controller prior to the aggregated sensor data being communicated to another controller thereby saving bandwidth and reducing transmission times. The sharing of sensor data can be enabled through the use of a sensor data distributor, such as a converter, repeater, or a serializer/deserializer set located as part of the controller and communicatively coupled to another such device in another controller using a data interface communication channel.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 12, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 2, 2021
    Assignee: Nvidia Corporation
    Inventors: Mark Costin, Zoran Nikolic, Ram Ganapathi
  • Patent number: 11161235
    Abstract: A self-moving robot includes a shell, a driving module, driving the self-moving robot to move on the ground; a mowing module, executing mowing work; an energy module, providing energy for the self-moving robot; a control module, controlling the self-moving robot to automatically move and execute work, the self-moving robot further includes a cleaning module executing ground cleaning work; the self-moving robot has a mowing mode and a cleaning mode, under the mowing mode, the control module controls the self-moving robot to execute mowing work, and under the cleaning mode, the control module controls the self-moving robot to execute cleaning work.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 2, 2021
    Assignee: POSITEC TECHNOLOGY (CHINA) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Mingming He, Zhendong Gao, Ka Tat Kelvin Wong, Gen Sun, Qiang Liu, Yue Rao
  • Patent number: 11163312
    Abstract: A vehicle agnostic removable pod can be mounted on a vehicle using one or more legs of a pod mount. The removable pod can collect and time stamp a variety of environmental data as well as vehicle data. For example, environmental data can be collected using a sensor suite which can include an IMU, 3D positioning sensor, one or more cameras, and/or a LIDAR unit. As another example, vehicle data can be collected via a CAN bus attached to the vehicle. Environmental data and/or vehicle data can be time stamped and transmitted to a remote server for further processing by a computing device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 8, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 2, 2021
    Assignee: Aurora Operations, Inc.
    Inventors: Nathaniel Gist, IV, Christopher Williams
  • Patent number: 11157011
    Abstract: An improved retrofit assembly for ground support equipment providing autonomous operation of the logistics ground support equipment (GSE). The assembly has a refit control system attached to the GSE (with a vehicle dynamics control processor and a data preprocessing control processor), retrofitted proprioceptive sensors coupled to the vehicle dynamics control processor monitoring operating parameters and characteristics of the GSE, retrofitted exteroceptive sensors coupled to the data preprocessing control processor that monitor an exterior environment of the GSE, and refit actuators for different control elements on the GSE and to autonomously alter motion of the GSE. The refit control system programmatically receives sensor data from the proprioceptive sensors and exteroceptive sensors; optimizes a path for the GSE based upon the different sensor data; and activates at least one of the actuators according to the optimized path for the GSE.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 29, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 26, 2021
    Inventors: Reuben F. Burch, V, Sherif Abelwahed, John E. Ball, Matt Doude, James R. Gafford, Tyler J. Hannis, Yucheng Liu, Michael S. Mazzola, Howard McKinney
  • Patent number: 11137263
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable media can receive a starting location and a destination location. A route from the starting location to the destination location is determined. A video preview of the route is generated based on map data associated with the route. The video preview depicts one or more vehicles to be taken by a user traversing the route.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 27, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2021
    Assignee: Lyft, Inc.
    Inventor: Kris Richard Efland
  • Patent number: 11136145
    Abstract: A brake cooling period prediction system for predicting a brake cooling period following a braking event, comprising a sensor apparatus in communication with a prediction apparatus. The sensor apparatus includes a torque sensor for measuring the torque reacted by a brake during a braking event; a wear sensor for measuring a wear state of the brake; and an environmental sensor for measuring at least one ambient condition of the environment of the brake. The prediction apparatus includes a memory storing information relating to the thermal behaviour of the brake; and a controller configured to receive a torque measurement, a wear measurement and an ambient condition measurement from the sensor apparatus; and predict a cooling period based on the received torque, wear and ambient condition measurements, and the information relating to the thermal behaviour of the brake.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 13, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2021
    Assignee: Airbus Operations Limited
    Inventor: Andrew Bill
  • Patent number: 11137774
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for managing speed-constrained vehicle operations. One exemplary method of operating an aircraft involves identifying a speed constraint associated with a navigational reference point, determining a speed envelope region en route to the navigational reference point based at least in part on the first speed constraint, identifying a target speed en route to the navigational reference point, and determining a speed profile for autonomously operations en route to the navigational reference point within the speed envelope region. The speed profile intersects the target speed within the speed envelope region and a slope of the speed profile is influenced by the target speed, for example, to effectuate or approximate the target speed by increasing the duration of time operation at or around the target speed is achieved. In one or more embodiments, multiple different target speeds associated with different flight levels or operating regions are accounted for.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2021
    Assignee: HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC.
    Inventors: Dorothee De Villele, Michal Polansky, Marek Batelka, Laurent Villacampa
  • Patent number: 11136036
    Abstract: A lane change controller, a system including the same, and a method thereof are provided. The lane change controller includes a processor configured to determine whether it is possible for a vehicle to perform a lane change depending on a road condition, based on information about surrounding circumstances, a storage storing the result of determining whether it is possible to perform the lane change, the result being determined by the processor, and a display device configured to display the result of determining whether it is possible to perform the lane change.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 6, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2021
    Assignees: HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, KIA MOTORS CORPORATION
    Inventors: Jun Soo Kim, Jin Su Jeong, Jae Yong Jeon
  • Patent number: 11132004
    Abstract: Vehicles and methods of navigating vehicles comprise at least three receiver antennae configured to receive radio frequency (RF) signals from one or more RF-transmitting antennae coupled to an object, receiver circuitry coupled to the receiver antennae to acquire the RF signals and to determine timing information from the acquired RF signals, memory storing information related to fixed distances between each receiver antenna and each other receiver antenna, a processor configured to determine a relative position of the vehicle with respect to the one or more RF-transmitting antennae based on the stored information related to the fixed distances between each receiver antenna and each other receiver antenna and on the timing information determined by the receiver circuitry, and a control system configured to control operation of the vehicle in response to the relative position of the vehicle with respect to the one or more RF-transmitting antennae determined by the processor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 14, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 28, 2021
    Assignee: POSITION IMAGING, INC.
    Inventors: Edward L. Hill, Brett Bilbrey, Harry Lee Deffebach, III, Krenar Komoni