Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Vehicle subsystem or accessory control
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-18
2001-08-14
Camby, Richard M. (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Vehicle subsystem or accessory control
C180S271000, C340S436000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06275755
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle impact severity identification device, and more particularly, to a vehicle impact severity identification device for identifying the front-impact severity of a vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Airbags have been standard accessories of cars for quite some time. Now, Whether an airbag should trigger or not depends upon the front-impact severity of the car. There are several prior art algorithms for determining when an airbag should trigger, such as energy and variation of energy analysis, sliding windows algorithms, or analysis of acceleration and variation of acceleration. There also exists a method for triggering an airbag when the integral of the acceleration detected by an acceleration detector exceeds a certain threshold value. However, each of these methods has both advantages and disadvantages, and none of them can consistently identify when an airbag should be triggered. It would be very beneficial, then, if there existed an algorithm that could more precisely identify the severity of a vehicle impact and provide that identification information to an airbag-triggering electrical control unit.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore a primary objective of the present invention to provide a vehicle impact identification device for identifying the front-impact severity of a vehicle.
Briefly, in a preferred embodiment, the present invention provides a vehicle impact severity identification device for identifying the front-impact severity of a vehicle. The vehicle impact severity identification device comprises:
an acceleration detector installed in the vehicle for detecting the acceleration of the vehicle and generating an acceleration signal; and
an impact severity identification circuit installed in the vehicle and electrically connected to the acceleration detector for identifying the impact severity of the vehicle, the identification circuit using the acceleration signal generated by the acceleration detector and generating an impact severity identification signal at an output port of the impact severity identification circuit;
wherein, during an impact, when the acceleration value of the acceleration signal exceeds a predetermined start value, the impact severity identification circuit will identify whether the impact is a severe impact based upon a displacement generated from the acceleration signal during a predetermined period; wherein, if the impact is not a severe impact, then the impact severity identification circuit will successively identify the impact severity based upon the displacement generated by the acceleration signal, a cumulated number of times that a jerk of the acceleration signal exceeds a threshold value, and the time interval that the jerk first exceeds the threshold value, until the identification signal is generated and outputted.
It is an advantage of the present invention that the vehicle impact severity identification device can precisely identify the severity of a vehicle impact and correctly determine if an airbag should be triggered.
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Lin Yeah-Min
Luo Kuang-Tso
Mon Yi-Jen
Camby Richard M.
Chung Shan Institute of Sorence and Technology
Hsu Winston
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