Communications: electrical – External condition vehicle-mounted indicator or alarm – Highway information
Reexamination Certificate
2001-09-14
2003-03-25
Trieu, Van (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
External condition vehicle-mounted indicator or alarm
Highway information
C340S580000, C340S581000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06538578
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of vehicle travel surface condition monitoring and control systems, and more particularly to a vehicle mounted and/or stationary positioned system for determining characteristics of surface materials related to adverse driving conditions which includes a vehicular mounted weather monitoring subsystem for measuring weather conditions at the vehicle location.
2. Description of the Related Art
Stationary weather stations have weather vanes and wind velocity meters to provide wind direction and speed information (velocity), and sensors to provide relative humidity, air temperature, and precipitation amounts and rates, among other parameters, to local and remote locations. Some aircraft also have been equipped with similar equipment to monitor conditions in thunderstorms and hurricanes. However, such instrumentation has commercially not been installed on motor vehicles.
Road condition service vehicles such as snow plow trucks and surface conditioning vehicles which deposit materials such as sand and chemicals such as salt to travel surfaces depending on the current or predicted road surface conditions do not carry weather analysis equipment on board. Proper surface conditioning materials are optimally applied during the early stages of adverse weather conditions as well as throughout the adverse weather condition. However, the optimal distribution of materials and compositions change dramatically as the storm progresses through a locality. Currently there is no real time weather sensing apparatus available that can be vehicle mounted which determines weather conditions such as wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, precipitation events, water content and rates of deposition, and barometric pressure.
A number of attempts have been made to sense the conditions of roadways, aircraft runways, and other surfaces for vehicular traffic, during changing adverse weather conditions. For example, it is known to place conductivity, temperature and other sensors either in the road surface or adjacent the road to monitor the temperature of the road surface, the subsurface temperature and/or monitor whether there is ice forming on the surface. Atmospheric sensors may also be provided adjacent the road. This information can then be fed to a central location for control and dispatch of trucks to apply salt or sand or other deicing mixtures. At airports these types of warning systems are used to inform maintenance crews that the runways need to be treated or alert the staff that deicing procedures need to be implemented. Some conventional systems have a supply of chemicals and pumps beside the roadway or runway to automatically spray the road when triggered by a sensor.
There is also a need for such a warning system on road vehicles such as cars, buses and trucks to detect pending adverse conditions. However, available mobile systems are limited to basic moisture detection and temperature monitoring systems. Some examples of such systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,492,952 and 4,678,056. One particular system, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,476, employs an infrared sensor which is mounted on the exterior of the vehicle and sends a signal to a microprocessor which then can display the temperature of the road surface. These systems are simplistic and do not tell the operator the critical information needed under all conditions, such as, what is the composition of and at what temperature will the particular material actually on the road surface freeze? Therefore there is a need for an on board material sensing apparatus and system for determining when an actual liquid on a road surface will freeze in view of current weather conditions at the vehicle location and alerting the operator to such adverse driving situations before they actually occur so that the operator can adjust material spreading techniques and strategies accordingly.
There is also a need for a mobile mounted sensing apparatus and system for use by road crews to evaluate current local weather conditions and determine and evaluate existing materials, if any, on a road surface in order to determine the optimumal amount, type and timing of additional material to be applied to the surface in order to reduce the current and future hazardous driving conditions.
There is also a need for an apparatus and system for predicting, displaying and sometimes controlling the distribution of travel surface conditioning materials available on board local road crew trucks based on current and predicted local weather conditions at the travel surface location. Such a system is unavailable today.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The system in accordance with the present invention addresses the above described needs. It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a unique multipurpose system which includes a vehicle mounted surface monitoring portion and/or a weather condition monitoring portion. In addition, the system preferably includes a fixed or mobile system for receiving and/or measuring weather conditions at vehicle locations and predicting and forecasting future travel surface conditions to provide recommendations for and verification of surface conditioning activities and results.
The surface monitoring portion may include a multipurpose sensor mounting platform accommodating a variety of sensors that enables the temporary use of materials such as surface water and road conditioning materials actually encountered on a road surface to determine the condition of the road surface. It is another object of the invention to provide a system for remotely detecting the actual materials and/or characteristics of materials on a roadway and determining a characteristic such as friction coefficients, chemical composition or the actual freezing temperature of a material on a road surface regardless of the makeup of the material or depth of the material.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a reliable display of information to the vehicle operator of actual and pending conditions of the road surface. It is a still further object of the invention to provide an apparatus for sensing actual road conditions that can function automatically or manually and which permits automatic or manual control of distribution of on board conditioning materials.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a system for remote sensing and evaluation of material present on a roadway surface which includes a means for extracting sufficient information to determine the characteristics of the composition of the surface material and utilizing user input information as well as local weather conditions at the vehicle location, as well as at fixed locations, to calculate the amount of additional material, if any, and what type, to be applied to the road surface to mitigate the development of future adverse conditions. This may involve utilization of look up tables, of historical data for the location, continual updating of such tables with actual data from the location, and utilization of algorithms for predicting future conditions at the site.
Throughout this specification, the term “vehicle” is meant inclusively to refer to any moving vehicle, whether it be a land vehicle such as a salt truck or an airborne or orbital vehicle such as an airplane or satellite. The sensing portion of the system of the present invention may be adapted for mounting and operation on any such vehicle. The vehicle referred to with respect to carrying and distributing surface conditioning materials typically is a truck.
One embodiment of the apparatus for sensing surface material condition in accordance with the present invention comprises a collection means for receiving material discharged, for example, from a vehicle wheel in contact with a roadway surface, at least one sensing means coupled to the collection means for detecting a characteristic of the received material such as friction coefficients, temperature, conductivity, and chemical
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
Trieu Van
LandOfFree
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