CN112141114A

CN112141114A - Narrow passage auxiliary system and method

Info

Publication number: CN112141114A
Application number: CN201910578580.5A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 孟庆雪
Original assignee: Continental Tamic Automotive Systems Shanghai Co ltd
Current assignee: Continental Zhixing Technology Shanghai Co ltd
Priority date: 2019-06-28
Filing date: 2019-06-28
Publication date: 2020-12-29
Anticipated expiration: 2039-06-28
Also published as: CN112141114B

Abstract

The invention relates to a narrow passage auxiliary system and a narrow passage auxiliary method. By the method and the system, the realizability and the cost are improved, and the functions and the use scenes are more complete.

Description

Narrow passage auxiliary system and method

Technical Field

The invention belongs to the field of automobiles, and particularly relates to a narrow-passage auxiliary system and a narrow-passage auxiliary method.

Background

With the development of automobile technology, the application of driving assistance technology to vehicles is more and more extensive. However, most of the current driving assistance techniques focus on driving on a normal road, such as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, collision warning, and the like, and automatic parking. However, it is a more worried situation for drivers, especially novices, to travel on narrow roads. After all, under normal road conditions, the states which can be achieved by the auxiliary driving technologies such as adaptive cruise, lane departure and collision early warning can be completely realized by keeping the attention of the driver, but on narrow roads, the auxiliary driving technologies are limited by insufficient driving experience, insufficient visual field, narrow roads and the like, and even if the attention is concentrated, scratching can hardly occur.

Typical cases of narrow roads include residential roads, one-way roads, and roads where there are a large number of vehicles parked violating the regulations. On these roads, vehicles are parked on both sides or one side of the road, and the vehicles are often not parked orderly, so that the running track of the vehicles needs to be adjusted continuously when the vehicles run on the originally narrow road. In addition, there may be some special cases, for example, after entering a cell road, if a vehicle is found to be going out of the cell, the vehicle needs to be allowed to fall out of the way, or for express tricycles, the vehicle needs to be backed up, or the vehicle needs to fall out of the way when the vehicle normally goes out of the cell. This undoubtedly increases the difficulty of driving, since the determination and correction of the driving trajectory when reversing is more difficult.

Chinese patent application CN 106945668A (application No. 201610955047.2) discloses a narrow-lane assist system, which determines the feasibility of narrow-lane traffic through a three-dimensional environment map constructed by a lidar and a three-dimensional environment map construction unit, and uses the three-dimensional environment map as a basis for path planning. However, this solution has the following disadvantages:

1. due to the high cost of the lidar, most of the current vehicles are not provided with such sensors, and the high cost of the lidar also limits the subsequent installation on the existing vehicles, so that the technical scheme in the patent application has not much practical application possibility in fact, and does not help to solve the urgent real demand.

2. According to the scheme, the three-dimensional environment map is constructed through the road data acquisition module, and then the passability judgment is carried out, however, the detection result of the pedestrian or the animal is not very accurate by the scheme adopting the laser radar, and particularly when the pedestrian or the animal is static on a narrow road, the pedestrian or the animal is possibly identified as an obstacle, so that the pedestrian or the animal is judged as the impassable road section by mistake.

3. The scheme can not deal with the situation that backing up driving is needed because other moving objects are avoided or because the parking spaces can not be found in the community.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to design a system for automatically helping a driver to finish passing aiming at occasions such as a residential area, a parking lot and the like, vehicles illegally occupying a public lane or narrow lanes formed by other obstacles, wherein the system comprises forward driving and a scene needing reversing driving when the vehicle cannot turn around. The invention provides the following technical scheme:

a lane pass assist system comprising:

a traffic feasibility determination module comprising:

an image static state acquisition processing unit for acquiring a static image of a road on which the vehicle is going to travel, then acquiring data information of a narrow road and sending the information to the judgment unit,

a determination unit that determines whether or not the host vehicle can pass through the current road by comparing the received information with the size information of the host vehicle;

a path planning module, comprising:

the image dynamic acquisition processing unit dynamically acquires images of the narrow road in the process that the vehicle passes through the narrow road and sends the acquired information to the path planning unit,

the radar detection unit detects the distance of surrounding obstacles in real time in the process that the vehicle passes through the narrow road and sends the acquired information to the path planning unit,

a path planning unit for planning a driving path based on the received information;

a decision module comprising:

and the vehicle control unit is used for controlling the vehicle according to the planned path so as to enable the vehicle to run according to the planned path.

Preferably, the lane assist system further includes:

and a display unit providing a real-time image of an environment around the vehicle.

Preferably, the image static state acquisition processing unit and the image dynamic state acquisition processing unit both adopt the form of a camera, and when acquiring a static image of a narrow lane and acquiring data information of the narrow lane, the image static state acquisition processing unit identifies an image of a static human or animal or a moving object on the narrow lane and eliminates the image.

Preferably, the decision module further comprises:

the oncoming vehicle detection unit is used for detecting whether an oncoming vehicle exists in real time in the process that the vehicle runs according to the planned path; and/or

And a side obstacle alarm unit which gives an alarm when there is a danger of collision of a side obstacle while the vehicle is traveling along the planned route.

Preferably, the decision module further comprises:

and a trajectory memory unit in which a vehicle travel trajectory is stored.

Correspondingly, the invention also provides a narrow passage auxiliary method, which comprises the following steps:

step S1, judging traffic feasibility: acquiring a static image of a narrow channel, identifying narrow channel data information from the static image, and comparing the narrow channel data information with the size information of the vehicle so as to determine whether the vehicle can pass through the narrow channel; if it is determined that the host vehicle can pass through the narrow lane, the routine proceeds to step S2, and if it is determined that the host vehicle cannot pass through the narrow lane, the driver is notified;

step S2, planning a travel path: dynamically acquiring images of narrow roads in the driving direction, calculating a central point of the narrowest road width as a track point of current vehicle driving, and planning a driving path by combining a distance detection result of an ultrasonic radar on surrounding obstacles;

step S3, controlling the vehicle to run according to the planned running path: and transverse and longitudinal control of the vehicle is completed according to the planned path, so that the vehicle is ensured to run on the planned path.

Preferably, in step S3, the method further includes:

monitoring whether an oncoming vehicle obstructs passing or not in real time by adopting a camera, and/or judging the distance of obstacles around the vehicle in real time by adopting a side ultrasonic radar; the driver is informed when an oncoming vehicle is detected and/or a collision risk with an obstacle is found to require giving up traffic.

Preferably, in step S3, the method further includes:

when an oncoming vehicle is detected and/or a collision risk with an obstacle is found to be required to give up traffic, the vehicle exits the lane along the original trajectory by the trajectory memory unit.

Preferably, the execution of step S1 is triggered by the driver selecting either a forward or a backward pass assist.

Preferably, in step S1, when acquiring a static image of the narrow road and acquiring the narrow road data information, identifying an image of a static human or animal or moving object located on the narrow road and rejecting the image; and/or the system automatically exits when the driver has any trigger brake, accelerator pedal or steering wheel exceeding a certain threshold during the whole process, and the driving process is taken over by the driver.

The invention has the following technical effects:

1. the system configuration of the camera and the side ultrasonic radar is adopted to judge the lane trafficability and track the driving track, and compared with the prior art which adopts the laser radar, the system configuration has great improvement in the aspects of realizability and cost.

2. The scheme of adopting the laser radar can not well identify the static pedestrian or animal in the narrow road, so that when the static pedestrian or animal exists on the narrow road, the static pedestrian or animal is likely to be identified as an obstacle, and the pedestrian or animal is misjudged as the impassable road section. This scheme adopts the mode of camera can carry out fine discernment to pedestrian and animal etc. and image processing unit carries out the judgement of information such as lane width again after can rejecting this type of barrier at first.

3. The scheme only designs a narrow passage passing scene in the forward driving process of the vehicle, and also designs a road section which cannot turn around and needs to be backed to drive and pass to assist a driver to automatically complete passing.

4. The prior scheme does not take counter measures for the condition that the system function cannot be completed due to the fact that the opposite vehicle comes or the position of an obstacle in the driving direction changes, and the scheme can adopt a mode of exiting along the original path for the scene.

Drawings

Fig. 1 shows the individual functional modules of the lane crossing assistance system according to the invention and shows the flow of information between the modules.

Fig. 2 shows a schematic flow diagram of a lane assist method according to the invention.

The drawings are only schematic and show only those parts which are necessary in order to clarify the invention, other parts being omitted or merely mentioned. That is, the present invention may include other components in addition to those shown in the drawings.

Detailed Description

The technical solution of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Referring to fig. 1, the lane crossing assistant system of the present invention mainly includes a crossing feasibility determining module, a route planning module, and a decision module. Specifically, the structure and function of each module are as follows:

and the traffic feasibility judgment module comprises an image static acquisition processing unit and a judgment unit. The image static acquisition processing unit is used for acquiring a static image of a road on which the vehicle is going to run through the image acquisition units such as the camera and the like, performing corresponding image processing, if obstacles which do not influence the traffic feasibility such as pedestrians, animals, moving objects and the like exist on the narrow road, firstly removing the obstacles, then identifying the data information of the narrow road, and sending the related information to the judgment unit. The determination unit compares the received road information with the size information of the host vehicle to determine whether the host vehicle can pass through the current road. Further, it is also possible to perform ranking based on comparison between the vehicle size information and the road data, thereby determining the ease of passage. Of course, those skilled in the art understand that the ranking is merely a preferred scheme. In actual operation, no ranking may be performed.

And the path planning module comprises an image dynamic acquisition processing unit, a radar detection unit and a path planning unit. The image dynamic acquisition processing unit preferably adopts a camera, and is used for dynamically acquiring images of the narrow road in the process that the vehicle passes through the narrow road and calculating the central point of the narrowest road width as the track point of the current vehicle running. In the planned driving path, the center point of the narrowest road width is located on the center line of the vehicle width. The radar detection unit preferably adopts ultrasonic radar, is mainly arranged on two sides of the vehicle and is used for detecting the distance of surrounding obstacles in real time. The dynamic image acquisition processing unit and the radar detection unit send acquired information to the path planning unit so as to plan a driving path.

And the decision module comprises a vehicle control unit which is used for controlling the vehicle according to the planned path so that the vehicle can run according to the selected track.

As a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the decision module may further be provided with an oncoming vehicle detection and side obstacle real-time alarm unit so as to detect whether there is an oncoming vehicle and issue an alarm when there is a danger of collision of a side obstacle.

In addition, as a further preferred embodiment of the present invention, a trajectory memory unit may be further provided in the decision module so that when the vehicle needs to be dumped on the original road for avoiding the oncoming vehicle, the vehicle can be directly dumped without performing the detection again. Of course, the purpose of providing the trajectory memory unit is mainly based on the consideration that: in general, this occurs when the time for entering a narrow road is short and the travel distance is short, and therefore, the road condition is not changed, and the efficiency can be further improved and the cost can be reduced. Of course, for safety, when the vehicle is driven out according to the original path of the track in the track memory unit, the rear radar works continuously, and the rear image of the vehicle is displayed to personnel on the vehicle in real time so as to avoid danger.

Those skilled in the art understand that, for the above-described functional modules, the modules are divided by functions. Thus, different functions may be performed by the same element. For example, preferably, the image static collecting and processing unit in the traffic feasibility judging module and the image dynamic collecting and processing unit in the path planning module may be the same image collecting and processing unit. And, the camera can include forward camera and backward camera simultaneously to make the vehicle can pass through narrow road under the state of driving or backing a car. Those skilled in the art also know that, in implementation, the division among the various modules may not be completely the same as the division of the modules in fig. 1, as long as the corresponding functions can be realized.

In addition, the lane assist system of the present invention may be triggered by a function switch on the vehicle, and the function switch may select whether the vehicle is heading forward through the lane or is backing out of the lane. The driver can participate in the lane assist method, which will be described in detail below, via a Human Machine Interface (HMI). The display unit of the vehicle also provides real-time images of the vehicle and its surroundings throughout the narrow passage and gives an alarm in the event of a danger.

The lane crossing assistance method of the present invention will be described with reference to fig. 1 and 2.

When the driver is about to pass through the narrow lane, he can turn on the narrow lane passage aid system by means of the function switch. The function switch of the present invention is provided with two options of forward pass assist and backward pass assist in view of the following: when entering some cells, in order to facilitate exiting, a driver can consider backing up to enter a narrow road, so that the driver can drive forwards when exiting; or after the vehicle drives into the cell in the forward direction, the result shows that no parking space in the cell can only drive out from the original road in a reverse mode; or only backing out for avoiding oncoming vehicles.

After the driver selects a specific passing mode through the function switch, the narrow passage auxiliary system of the invention starts to work, and at this time, the process goes to step S1 to perform the passing feasibility judgment. Specifically, an image static acquisition processing unit (specifically, a forward camera or a backward camera) in the traffic feasibility judgment module acquires a static image of a narrow lane, firstly identifies whether there are obstacles such as pedestrians, animals or moving objects, and the like, and if there are the obstacles, eliminates the image information, and then extracts data information of the narrow lane. Subsequently, the narrow-lane data information is compared with the host-vehicle size information stored in advance in the determination unit to determine whether the host vehicle can pass through the narrow lane.

In general, the road information mainly includes a travelable width and a travelable height of a road. The camera collects obstacle information (such as whether an obstacle exists or not and whether the height of the obstacle is higher than a preset height) on the road, and extracts the information of the driving width and the driving height of the road. And when the difference value between the information of the travelable width and the travelable height of the narrow road and the vehicle body width, the vehicle body height, the chassis height and the like of the vehicle exceeds a first threshold value, judging that the narrow road is a passable road. In addition, the difficulty degree of passing can be graded by setting threshold values of different grades, and then the system carries out the calculation of the path planning module under the condition of the authorization of a driver. When it is extremely difficult although it is determined that the road is passable, the driver may choose not to enter the narrow lane. If the driver is authorized, the process proceeds to step S2. Of course, if the information such as the travelable width and the travelable height of the narrow lane exceeds the second threshold value in comparison with the information such as the vehicle height and the width of the host vehicle, the process may automatically proceed to step S2 without the authorization of the driver. Preferably, the driver may be prompted on a screen that a driving path is about to be planned. If it is determined in step S1 that the narrow lane cannot be passed, the driver is notified of the determination result in the form of an image or sound.

Upon proceeding to step S2, the path planning module starts planning of the travel path based on the narrow lane information obtained in step S1.

In the path planning module, a camera dynamically collects images of narrow roads in the driving direction, and the central point of the narrowest road width is calculated to be used as a track point of the current vehicle. The central point is continuously updated along with the movement of the vehicle, meanwhile, the ultrasonic radar on the side of the vehicle body can detect the distance of surrounding obstacles in real time, and the vehicle driving path is planned according to the data results of the camera and the ultrasonic radar on the side.

When the planning of the travel path is completed, the process proceeds to step S3, where the vehicle is controlled to travel along the planned travel path. And the vehicle control unit completes the transverse and longitudinal control of the vehicle according to the planned path, so as to ensure that the vehicle runs on the planned path. During travel, when the driver considers that there is a risk of collision or other circumstances, the process may be stopped by a braking operation. Of course, it is preferable that the camera monitors whether the oncoming vehicle obstructs the passage in real time, and the side ultrasonic radar also performs the distance determination on the obstacle situation around the vehicle in real time. When the vehicle is required to temporarily exit a narrow road when the vehicle is approaching or the vehicle is required to give up traffic when the vehicle is found to have collision danger with an obstacle during driving, the traffic can be given up under the authorization of a driver. Subsequently, as a preferred embodiment, the vehicle can exit the lane along the original trajectory by the trajectory memorizing unit. Of course, the driver may authorize the lane-passing assistance driving to resume from step S1.

Preferably, all or part of the traffic process and all the warning displays are displayed to the driver in real time.

In the whole process of system operation, when the driver has any trigger brake, accelerator pedal or steering wheel to exceed a certain threshold value, the system will automatically exit, and the driving process is taken over by the driver.

The foregoing description of the embodiments of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. Of course, what has been described above is merely exemplary of embodiments that are relevant to the spirit and principles of the invention. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes may be made in the described examples without departing from the principles and spirit thereof, and that such changes are contemplated by the inventors and are within the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.

Claims

1. A lane assist system, comprising:

a traffic feasibility determination module comprising:

an image static state acquisition processing unit for acquiring a static image of a narrow road on which the vehicle is going to travel, recognizing data information of the narrow road, and sending the information to the determination unit,

a path planning module, comprising:

a decision module comprising:

2. The lane assist system of claim 1, further comprising:

3. The narrow-lane passage auxiliary system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the image static acquisition processing unit and the image dynamic acquisition processing unit both take the form of a camera, and the image static acquisition processing unit identifies and rejects images of static human beings or animals or moving objects located on the narrow lane when acquiring static images of the narrow lane and acquiring data information of the narrow lane.

4. The narrow-lane passage assistance system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the decision module further comprises:

5. The narrow-lane passage assistance system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the decision module further comprises:

and a trajectory memory unit in which a vehicle travel trajectory is stored.

6. A narrow passage auxiliary method is characterized by comprising the following steps:

7. The narrow passage assisting method according to claim 6, further comprising, in step S3:

8. The narrow passage assisting method according to claim 7, further comprising, in step S3:

9. The narrow-lane passage assistance method according to any one of claims 6 to 8, wherein the execution of step S1 is triggered by the driver selecting either forward passage assistance or backward passage assistance.

10. The narrow-lane passage assistance method according to any one of claims 6 to 8, wherein in step S1, when acquiring a still image of the narrow lane and acquiring the narrow-lane data information, an image of a stationary human or animal or moving object located on the narrow lane is identified therefrom and eliminated; and/or the system automatically exits when the driver has any trigger brake, accelerator pedal or steering wheel exceeding a certain threshold during the whole process, and the driving process is taken over by the driver.