US 11,702,106 B1Granted

Tuning a safety system based on near-miss events

AssigneeZoox, Inc.

InventorsLeonardo Poubel Orenstein, Lingqiao Qin

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

An autonomous vehicle safety system may activate to prevent collisions by detecting that a planned trajectory may result in a collision. If the safety system is overly sensitive, it may cause false positive activations, and if the system isn't sensitive enough the collision avoidance system may not activate and prevent a collision, which is unacceptable. It may be impossible or prohibitively difficult to detect false positive activations of a safety system and it is unacceptable to risk a false negative, so tuning the safety system is notoriously difficult. Tuning the safety system may include detecting near-miss events using surrogate metrics, and tuning the safety system to increase or decrease a rate of near-miss events as a stand-in for false positives.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A method comprising:

receiving sensor data associated with operation of a safety component of an autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the sensor data, a representative metric associated with operation of the autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the representative metric, that at least a portion of the operation is associated with a near-miss event, wherein the near-miss event indicates that the autonomous vehicle passed within a threshold distance of an object;
altering a parameter of one or more of the safety component or another component of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the near-miss event to determine an updated component, wherein the altering:
is based at least in part on a near-miss event count and further comprises determining that the safety component remained inactive;
and
decreases a near-miss rate below an upper near-miss threshold and increases a false positive rate, or
increases the near-miss rate to meet or exceed a lower near-miss threshold and decreases the false positive rate;
and
transmitting the altered parameter to the autonomous vehicle, such that the autonomous vehicle controls operations of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the altered parameter.

7 more elements

A system comprising:

one or more processors;
and
a memory storing processor-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform operations comprising:
receiving sensor data associated with operation of a safety component of an autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the sensor data, one or more characteristics of operation of the autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the one or more characteristics, that at least a portion of the operation is associated with a near-miss event;
altering a parameter of the one or more of the safety component or another component of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the near-miss event to determine an updated component, wherein altering the parameter is based at least in part on a near-miss event count and further comprises determining that the safety component remained inactive;
and
transmitting the altered parameter to the autonomous vehicle, such that the autonomous vehicle controls operations of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the altered parameter.

6 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing processor-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

receiving sensor data associated with operation of a safety component of an autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the sensor data, one or more characteristics of operation of the autonomous vehicle;
determining, based at least in part on the one or more characteristics, that at least a portion of the operation is associated with a near-miss event;
altering a parameter of the one or more of the safety component or another component of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the near-miss event to determine an updated component, wherein altering the parameter is further based at least in part on a near-miss event count and further comprises determining that the safety component withheld activation;
and
transmitting the altered parameter to the autonomous vehicle, such that the autonomous vehicle controls operations of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the altered parameter.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 16/953,277Filed 19 Nov 2020
Granted: 18 Jul 2023
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification20 codes

B60W 60/0015
Planning or execution of driving tasks: specially adapted for safety
G08G 1/0133
Traffic data processing: for classifying traffic situation
B60W 30/09
Active safety systems predicting or avoiding probable or impending collision or attempting to minimise its consequences: taking automatic action…
B60W 30/0956
Predicting travel path or likelihood of collision: the prediction being responsive to traffic or environmental parameters