Systems and methods for melting frozen material on windshields for dashboard cameras of parked vehicles

Abstract

A vehicle includes a windshield, a front-facing camera, a heating element, data processing hardware, and memory hardware. The camera is configured to capture image data through a portion of the windshield. The heating element is configured to locally heat the portion of the windshield. The memory hardware is in communication with the data processing hardware and stores instructions that, when executed on the data processing hardware, cause the data processing hardware to perform operations. The operations include determining whether frozen material is covering at least some of the portion of the windshield and, based on determining that frozen material is covering the at least some of the portion of the windshield, activating the heating element to locally heat the portion of the windshield to melt the frozen material covering the at least some of the portion of the windshield.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.