Vehicle fuel level estimation
AssigneeNissan North America, Inc.
InventorsVikram Krishnamurthy, Timothy O'Donnell, Lawrence Rosinski
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Estimating a fuel consumption includes receiving a request for estimating the fuel consumption between a first time and a second time; estimating a first fuel consumption value in a first time interval using fuel-sender resistance data; estimating a second fuel consumption value in a second time interval using fuel-injected mass data, where the first time interval and the second time interval are consecutive, non-overlapping intervals; and combining at least the first fuel consumption value and the second fuel consumption value to obtain a fuel consumption value.
Claims20
A method of estimating a fuel consumption, comprising:
- receiving a request for estimating the fuel consumption between a first time and a second time;
- estimating a first fuel consumption value in a first time interval using fuel-sender resistance data;
- estimating a second fuel consumption value in a second time interval using fuel-injected mass data, wherein the first time interval and the second time interval are consecutive, non-overlapping intervals;
- and
- combining at least the first fuel consumption value and the second fuel consumption value to obtain a fuel consumption value.
A vehicle, comprising:
- a fuel tank;
- a fuel sender;
- and
- a processor configured to obtain an estimate of a fuel level at a time instant in the fuel tank by steps to:
- record, in history data, fuel-injected mass data and first corresponding timestamps;
- record, in the history data, fuel sender resistance data and second corresponding timestamps;
- receive a request to obtain the estimate of the fuel level at the time instant;
- obtain an instant fuel sender resistance value corresponding to the time instant;
- in response to the instant fuel sender resistance value indicating that the instant fuel sender resistance value is unreliable to obtain the estimate of the fuel level:
- obtain, using the history data, a start time of an unreliable region including the instant fuel sender resistance value;
- obtain, using the history data, a fuel sender resistance value corresponding to the start time of the unreliable region;
- obtain, using lookup data, a first fuel level corresponding to the fuel sender resistance value;
- obtain, using the fuel-injected mass data, a second fuel consumed level between the start time and the instant time;
- and
- combine the first fuel level and the second fuel consumed level to obtain the estimate of the fuel level;
- and
- provide the estimate of the fuel level.
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, comprising instructions executable by a processor to perform operations comprising:
- receiving a first request for estimating a fuel consumption between a first time and a second time;
- estimating a first fuel consumption value in a first time interval using fuel-sender resistance data;
- estimating a second fuel consumption value in a second time interval using fuel-injected mass data, wherein the first time interval and the second time interval are consecutive, non-overlapping intervals;
- combining at least the first fuel consumption value and the second fuel consumption value to obtain a fuel consumption value;
- and
- outputting the fuel consumption value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.