US 11,440,474 B2Granted

Vehicle and system for detecting trailer connection

AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC

InventorsLuke Niewiadomski, Roger Arnold Trombley, Lihui Chen

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A vehicle is provided that includes a trailer hitch, a camera oriented to capture images of the trailer hitch, and a controller processing the captured images, detecting a trailer safety chain associated with a trailer, determining a connection state of the trailer safety chain to the vehicle, and generating an output indicative of the determined connection state of the trailer safety chain to the vehicle. The vehicle may determine a change in a scene of the captured image following placement of a trailer coupler onto a vehicle hitch and determine a trailer connection state based on the change in scene.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A vehicle comprising:

a trailer hitch;
a camera oriented to capture images of the trailer hitch;
a hitch assist system for assisting with connecting a trailer to the trailer hitch, wherein the hitch assist system places the vehicle in a position such that the trailer hitch is aligned to be coupled to the trailer coupler;
and
a controller processing the captured images, detecting a trailer safety chain associated with a trailer, determining a connection state of the trailer safety chain to the vehicle, and generating an output indicative of the determined connection state of the trailer safety chain to the vehicle, wherein the step of detecting the trailer safety chain comprises comparing the captured images to known safety chain images and recognizing a contour pattern of a chain by recognizing an outline of interconnected linkages of the chain in the image, and wherein the step of determining the connection of the trailer safety chain to the vehicle comprises determining a continuous safety chain pattern between the vehicle and the trailer.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 16/404,932Filed 7 May 2019
Published: US 2020/0353864 A112 Nov 2020
Granted: 13 Sep 2022
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification25 codes

B60R 1/003
Specially adapted for covering the peripheral part of the vehicle, e.g. for viewing tyres, bumpers or the like: for viewing trailer hitches
B60D 1/06
Traction couplings or hitches characterised by their type: ball-and-socket hitches
B60D 1/62
Auxiliary devices: involving supply lines, electric circuits or the like
B60Q 9/00
Arrangement or adaptation of signal devices not provided for in one of

Family

US 2020/0353864 A1Pre-grant publication · published 12 Nov 2020
US 11,440,474 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

Timeline

Citations

Open elsewhere

Building an agent or pulling many patents? Use the API or MCP server instead of scraping pages. Get an API key