Unobtrusive driving assistance method and system for a vehicle to avoid hazards

An unobtrusive driving assistance system mounted on a vehicle for detecting and avoiding hazards, said system comprising:

• one or more positioning sensors mounted on the vehicle, one or more rangefinders mounted on the vehicle, and a computer on board the vehicle, said one or more positioning and vehicle state sensors and one or more rangefinders being interfaced with said computer, said computer being interfaced with the vehicle's actuation system;
• a driving module being one or more persons or said computer that issues driving commands to the vehicle;
• said computer being programmed with instructions for computing a range of safe driving commands including
• computing a range of all safe trajectories for said vehicle to avoid any hazards in the environment of said vehicle detected by said one or more rangefinders, and
• converting said range of safe trajectories into a range of safe driving commands by using an inverse kinematic model of said vehicle;
• said computer being programmed with instructions for adjusting said driving module's driving commands including:
• comparing the driving commands from said driving module with said range of safe driving commands,
• adjusting the driving commands from said driving module if they are outside the range of safe driving commands with a minimal correction, to produce driving commands that are within said range of safe driving commands and within the velocity and inclination limits of said vehicle and considers constraints on the vehicle's speed and turning rate to avoid generating infeasible or non-smooth motion commands so that the driving module's intention is respected to the maximum extent possible, which is perceived as unobtrusive to the driving module and not as interfering behavior and passing said driving commands to said vehicle;
• otherwise when said driving commands fall within said range of safe driving commands, passing said driving commands to said vehicle without modification;
• and
• said computer being programmed with instructions for notifying said driving module of said command adjustment and hazard information.

A non-transitory computer-readable media containing instructions, which when read and executed by a computer, causes the computer to execute a method for providing unobtrusive driving assistance to a driving module of a vehicle to avoid and handle hazards, the vehicle having a computer, one or more positioning sensors connected to said computer, one or more rangefinder sensors connected to said computer, said driving module being one or more persons or a computer system that issues driving commands to the vehicle and interfaced with said computer, said method comprising:

• acquiring raw sensor data from said one or more positioning sensors and said one or more rangefinder sensors;
• estimating a state of said vehicle from said raw data from said one or more positioning sensors;
• identifying hazards to said vehicle from said raw data from said one or more rangefinder sensors;
• computing a range of safe driving commands for all said hazards;
• receiving driving commands from said driving module and comparing them with said range of safe driving commands;
• and
• when said driving commands fall outside of said range of safe driving commands, adjusting said driving commands from said driving module with minimal correction, to produce driving commands that are within said range of safe driving commands and within the velocity and inclination limits of said vehicle and considers constraints on the vehicle's speed and turning rate to avoid generating infeasible or non-smooth motion commands so as the driving module's intention is respected to the maximum extent possible, which is perceived as unobtrusive to the driving module and not observed as interfering behavior, otherwise when said driving commands fall within said range of safe driving commands, passing said driving commands to said vehicle without modification.