Vehicle maneuvering aids
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsJeremy John Greenwood, Stephen Nicholls, Andrew Stephen Bell Crawford
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A vehicle 1 towing a trailer 4 is fitted with three video cameras 5, 6, 7 fitted to the rear of the vehicle and on each door mirror. A view from any camera can be presented to the driver on a display 11. A predicted trailer path, calculated in a computing unit 10, is also presented to the driver on the display 11 as guide lines overlaid on the camera view. The computing unit 10 is also configured to calculate a hitch angle by tracking the position of a trailer-mounted marker in the camera view.
Claims7
A method of predicting a path of a trailer attached to a vehicle comprising the steps of:
- measuring a vehicle steering angle by a computing unit of a vehicle;
- obtaining first and second views by an image processor of the vehicle, from at least two rearward-looking video cameras mounted on the vehicle;
- determining a trailer view by the image processor, from the first and second camera views;
- displaying the trailer view by the image processor on a screen visible to a driver;
- determining a hitch angle, θt, by the computing unit and a parameter store of the vehicle, between the vehicle and trailer and using the trailer view;
- calculating a predicted path of the trailer by the computing unit, from the hitch angle and steering angle;
- displaying the predicted trailer path by the image processor, as an overlaid track on the trailer view;
- tracking a marker associated with the trailer by the image processor, across a field of view of at least one of the rearward-looking video cameras;
- and
- converting a vertical displacement of the marker by the computing unit in the field of view to an angular displacement to determine a pitch angle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.