JP2003187283A - Digital travel recording system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a travel management system capable of deciding whether actual travel interrupts the improvement of fuel consumption or not and informing a driver of the decided result in a tachograph for recording travel information such as travel time, vehicle speeds and traveling distances. <P>SOLUTION: Speed data obtained from a speed sensor built in a tachograph loaded in a vehicle are always acquired, a certain reference value is set in order to judge whether the speed of the vehicle is repeatedly and remarkably sharply increased/reduced or not within a certain unit time, and when a difference between a maximum speed and a minimum speed exceeds the reference value prescribed times or more within the unit time, display indicating wave-like operation in the unit time is displayed on a display and warning is given to the driver. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a digital operation recorder mounted on a vehicle.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A digital operation recorder is mounted on a vehicle such as a truck and records various kinds of operation data such as a traveled distance. This operation data is automatically calculated based on the detection value of the speed sensor of the vehicle and is recorded in a recording medium such as a memory card. By reading this memory card with a reading device installed in a business office, it is used to automatically input data to a computer connected to the reading device and to automatically create a daily operation report.

Further, in the above-described digital operation recording apparatus, when the vehicle-mounted device mounted on the vehicle acquires speed data, time data, and mileage data, the vehicle-mounted device is equipped with a GPS (Global Positioning System).
tem) function, and obtains information such as the current location and traffic conditions of the vehicle equipped with the in-vehicle device, and the vehicle management office side assigns the vehicle a route to travel according to the current location and traffic conditions. It is common practice to make decisions such as how long it takes the vehicle to reach its destination.

By the way, in preparing the daily operation report,
In order to easily grasp the operation history of the vehicle on one day, a plurality of graph displays showing the vehicle operation status on one day are configured and displayed in an arbitrary display form. This makes it possible to display graphs in an appropriate display format as needed, such as when you want to know the overall operating status of a day, or when you want to know the operating status during a specific time period.
The operation status of each vehicle can be known more precisely.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a graph showing an operating condition created by a conventional general digital recorder. (A) is a 24-hour display graph showing the entire operation status of one day, where the horizontal axis represents the operating time zone and the vertical axis represents the speed ([km / hour]) corresponding to the operating time zone.
(B) is an 8-hour display graph that displays only 8 hours of the entire day's operation. This is to select an arbitrary time zone (for 8 hours) from the 24-hour display graph of (A) and display the operation status in the selected time zone as a graph on the entire screen.

Similar to (B), (C) represents a four-minute display graph that graphically displays the operating status of only four minutes of an arbitrary time zone of the day. With this, it is possible to more precisely know the details of the operation status in a specific time zone.

Generally, it is obligatory for a digital operation recorder, which is a field to which the technology related to the present invention belongs, to have a function of displaying the above-described three types of graph display forms.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention]

By the way, in recent years, it has been emphasized to improve the fuel consumption in the traveling of vehicles, not limited to the transportation vehicles such as trucks. For example, behaviors that worsen fuel economy include high-speed driving on a highway that is heavily used for idling when the vehicle is stopped and before starting to take off.

Of these, if the driver is aware of the above-mentioned and, it is possible not to take an appropriate action, but since the following are actions that must be taken care when driving, In some cases, it was not always possible to pay attention to improve fuel efficiency effectively.

In particular, for vehicles such as trucks used for long-distance transportation, it is extremely difficult for the driver to be aware of the above-mentioned behavior for improving fuel consumption, and driving assistance for improving fuel consumption is required. Doing things is becoming an important thing.

Therefore, in recent years, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-69555, a technique of recording and displaying information on fuel consumption in addition to information on operation status in a conventional operation recording device has been used. There is. With this technology, data on speed and engine speed are displayed in a graph for the same time axis, and fuel consumption data is also displayed in the same graph, so that the operating status can be determined from speed and engine speed data. Therefore, there is an advantage that you can see at a glance how the fuel consumption changes.

[0012] However, in the above-mentioned technique, it is necessary to mount a fuel consumption meter for measuring the fuel consumption amount, and at the same time, it is not possible to clearly tell the driver what kind of operation hinders the improvement of fuel consumption. There is a drawback that. Regarding the latter drawback, for example, in the speed-engine speed-fuel consumption graph, a graph showing that sudden acceleration / starting and high fuel consumption occurred is provided on the same screen as a new graph. Proposals have been made, but they were not sufficient to bring about improvements in fuel efficiency during operation.

[0013]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problems, and in a first aspect of the present invention, a digital operation recording device mounted on a vehicle The step of storing the speed data of the vehicle, extracting the maximum value and the minimum value of the speed within a certain fixed time,
Determining the difference x, determining whether the difference x exceeds a predetermined reference value X, and issuing a warning when the difference x exceeds the reference value X. It proposes a digital operation recording device characterized by comprising a recording medium storing an operation status monitoring program consisting of.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in a digital operation recording device mounted on a vehicle, a step of continuously storing speed data of a running vehicle, and a maximum speed value within a certain fixed time And extract the lowest value,
The step of obtaining the difference x, the step of determining whether the difference x exceeds a predetermined reference value X, and the step of determining whether the difference x continuously exceeds the reference value X for a certain number of times. A digital operation characterized by comprising a recording medium storing an operation status monitoring program, which comprises a step of making a judgment and a step of issuing a warning when the difference x continuously exceeds the reference value X. Proposing a recording device.

In the invention described in claim 1 or 2,
Further, the operation status monitoring program may be set so as to automatically operate while traveling on a highway. (Claim 3)

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the digital operation recorder according to the first to third aspects, a sensor for measuring at least the oxygen concentration in the exhaust gas and the intake pressure is provided. Digital operation recording devices have been proposed.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below. FIG. 1 shows a general structure of an in-vehicle device of an operation recorder provided with a means for measuring the engine speed. In the figure, reference numeral 1 denotes an in-vehicle device mounted on a vehicle.
Wireless device 2, antenna 3, GPS (GlobalPosi
tioning System) receiver 4, antenna 5, display 8
And a sensor group 9 and an operation recorder 20. The sensor group 9 is composed of various sensors that measure and detect the vehicle speed, the engine speed, the oxygen concentration, the intake pressure, and the like, and sends the measured data (digital data) to the control unit 7.

The wireless device 2 is for communicating with a center such as a business office, and transmits / receives data via the antenna 3. The GPS receiver 4 is a communication satellite 6
Positional data such as latitude and longitude sent from is received via the antenna 5. The display 8 is composed of a liquid crystal display or the like, is provided on a panel of a driver's seat of a vehicle, and displays various kinds of information.

The digital operation recorder 20 includes a control unit 7
And a card processing device 10. The control unit 7 includes a CPU 12 that controls the entire vehicle-mounted device 1,
An operation point table 13 for storing the operated area is provided. Although illustration is omitted, the control unit 7 is also provided with a ROM storing a program, a RAM temporarily storing data, an interface circuit, and the like.

The card processing device 10 is composed of a card reader / writer having both a reading function and a writing function. A card 11 is inserted into the card processing device 10. The card 11 is carried by the driver and is composed of, for example, a memory card having a built-in RAM. However, the card 11 is not limited to this, and it is also possible to use a magnetic card, an optical card, or the like as the card 11.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the electrical configuration of the data processing device installed in the business office. The data processing device 21 includes a reading device 14, a computer 15,
The printer 16 and the reading device 14 and the printer 16 are connected to the computer 15.

The reading device 14 is provided with a card reader for reading the data recorded on the above-mentioned card 11, and is further provided with a registration key and a display device for registering attendance or leaving the company. There is. The computer 15 is composed of a personal computer (PC) and includes a well-known display, keyboard, mouse and the like. The printer 16 creates a daily driving report based on the data processed by the computer 15.

More specifically, the transport truck T returns to the business office S after completing a series of operations, and when the operation is finished, the driver removes the card 11 from the vehicle-mounted device 1 and gets off the truck. Then, the card 11 is inserted into the reading device 14 at the business office S, and then the leaving registration key of the reading device 14 is operated to perform the leaving registration. In the data processing device 21 of the business office S, the computer 15 processes the data of the card 11 read by the reading device 14 to create time chart data indicating the operation status of the vehicle, and the created time chart is operated by the printer 16. It will be printed (output) as a daily report.

The graph shown in FIG. 3 is an example of operation record data showing a daily driving report, and as described above, a plurality of displays such as 24-hour display, 8-hour display, 12-minute display, etc. It can be displayed in the form. 30 in FIG. 3 is 1
It shows a graph showing the operation status in 2 minutes display. In the graph, 30A indicates the vehicle speed, and 30B indicates the engine speed.

Reference numeral 31 in the graph represents an operation in which the speed changes drastically in a short time due to sudden acceleration, sudden start, and heavy use of brakes during operation (hereinafter referred to as wavy operation).
It is a graph showing whether or not the vehicle is running and whether or not the vehicle is idling while the operation is stopped. The time zone with a solid line like 31C indicates that the vehicle is operating in a wavy manner. ing. How to determine whether the operation is wavy will be described later.

Reference numeral 32 is a graph showing the fuel consumption [km / liter] corresponding to the operation time, and is displayed so that it can be grasped at a glance by looking at the daily driving report whether or not the vehicle can be driven with good fuel consumption. 33 is a display part for knowing the operation status of a day in more detail, and the marker 3 on the upper part of the graph 30.
It is possible to show the speed at the time pointed to by 4, the engine speed, the fuel consumption (fuel consumption), the travel distance up to that point, and the like. These displayed data are formed based on the signals detected by the sensor group 9 described above. In particular,
The fuel consumption can be calculated from data of oxygen concentration and exhaust amount per unit time, engine speed, intake pressure, and volumetric efficiency. The volumetric efficiency is a unique value that varies from vehicle to vehicle, but can be calculated assuming that it is approximately 0.8. Similarly, the displacement is an eigenvalue that differs for each vehicle, but it may be calculated by referring to the data at the time of vehicle inspection performed for each vehicle.

Reference numeral 35 is a button for selecting the display form of the graph, and it can be seen that the 12-minute display form is currently selected.

Next, in order to display a graph showing that the operation is a wavy operation, a flow for determining whether or not the operation is a wavy operation will be described with reference to FIG.

First, the time axis is divided into continuous sections for a certain fixed period (for example, 1 minute 30 seconds), and sections 1, 2,
3 ,. ． ． ． Indicates the time zone of operation by n. In FIG. 4, first, the speed data for section 1 is continuously acquired (STEP 1), and the maximum speed V1 and the minimum speed v1 in section 1 are detected (STEP 2).
Next, after calculating and storing the difference ΔV1 between the minimum speed V1 and the minimum speed v1 (STEP3), the magnitude is compared with a predetermined reference value V (for example, 20 km / h) (S
TEP4).

Next, similarly to the section 1, the speed data for the section 2 is acquired (STEP 5), and the maximum speed V is similarly obtained.
2. Obtain the minimum speed v2 (STEP6). This V2
And the difference ΔV2 between v2 and v2 are calculated and stored (STEP
7) Compare the value with the reference value V (STEP 8). Δ
If V2 exceeds the reference value V, ΔV1 is read out and the reference value V and the magnitude are compared again (STEP 9).
Also exceeds the reference value V, it is determined that the wavy operation is being performed, and a warning sound is generated (STEP 10).

In this way, the speed data for the constant section n is always acquired from the speed data writing unit, and the maximum speed Vn is obtained.
And the minimum speed vn are obtained, the difference ΔVn and the reference value V are compared in magnitude, and when ΔVn continuously exceeds the reference value V (ΔVn and ΔVn−1 continuously), it is determined to be a wavy operation. And warn. As for the sections 4 to 6 in FIG. 3, the difference ΔV4 to ΔV6 between the maximum speed and the minimum speed exceeds the reference value V (here, 20 km / h), so it is determined to be the time zone during the wavy operation. Therefore, the warning sound is generated and the graph 31C indicating that it is the time period during which the wavy operation is performed is displayed. Also, the fuel consumption graph 32
The fuel consumption status (graph 32D) for the wavy operation time zone (sections 4 to 6) is shown in FIG.

In the example of FIG. 4, for two consecutive sections,
When the difference between the maximum speed and the minimum speed exceeds the reference value V, it was judged to be wavy operation. However, depending on the setting, a warning sound is emitted when it exceeds three times in a row or four times in a row. It goes without saying that it can be changed as appropriate. Further, usually, these changes are set by an administrator who manages the operation. Similarly, the numerical value of the reference value V can be set in advance by a person who manages the operation by a value as necessary.

A more optimal embodiment will be described below from the viewpoint of driving assistance that brings about the improvement of fuel consumption, which is the main object of the present invention. For example, the detection of the speed difference as described with reference to FIG. 4 does not have a great effect in the case of an ordinary road where there are frequent stop points due to signals or the like. This is because when traveling on a general road, it is usually necessary to repeatedly stop at a signal for a certain period of time (for example, 3 minutes), and in such a case, almost all sections are wavy. This is because it will be detected.

Therefore, it can be said that the effect of the present invention is more effective for the operation on a specific road such as an expressway which does not need to be stopped by a signal or the like. Therefore, when traveling on a normal road, the above-mentioned wavy driving detection program is in the OFF state, and when the road traveling to the expressway is changed, the above-mentioned wavy driving detection program is changed from OFF to ON. It is preferable that The switching of the program may be performed manually, but the automatic switching will reduce the burden on the driver more and prevent the situation of forgetting to operate the program. A graph 31C ′ in the graph 31 in FIG. 3 represents a time zone in which the vehicle is traveling on a highway.

For the automatic switching of the program as described above, it is necessary to detect the time point when entering the highway and the time point when leaving the highway. There are many possible methods for this, but for example, GPS (Global Position)
It is also possible to determine the type of road that is currently running from map data obtained from the Ning System, etc., and turn on the wavy driving detection program when the running on the highway is started. Further, the traveling map data may be stored in the recording medium in advance, and the wavy driving detection program may be turned on when it is determined that the road on which the vehicle is currently traveling has become an expressway. In the case of manually switching such a program, an ON / OFF switch equivalent to an on-vehicle device display or main body is provided in advance, and the driver pushes the switch just before traveling on a highway. Techniques are also conceivable.

[0036]

According to the present invention described above, it is possible to clearly inform the driver whether or not the operation currently being carried out will hinder the improvement of fuel efficiency. When traveling, it can greatly contribute to fuel efficiency improvement. In addition, it is not necessary to mount a fuel consumption meter for measuring the fuel consumption amount on the vehicle, the hardware configuration is relatively easy, and the cost of the device can be expected to be reduced.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall configuration explanatory diagram showing an operation recording device used in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an overall configuration explanatory diagram showing an operation recording system used in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an example of a graph showing a result of detecting a wavy operation based on information obtained from various sensors in an example.

FIG. 4 is an example of a flowchart for detecting a wavy operation based on information obtained from various sensors in the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an example showing conventional operation record data.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... In-vehicle device, 2 ... Wireless device, 4 ... GPS receiver, 6 ...
Communication satellite, 7 ... control unit, 10 ... card processing device, 11 ...
Card, 12 ... CPU, 13 ... Operating point table, 14
... reading device, 15 ... computer, 17 ... wireless device, 2
0 ... Digital operation recorder, S ... Sales office, T ... Transportation truck, A, B, C ... Operation point

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A recording medium such as a removable memory card mounted on a vehicle for collecting and recording speed data, time data and mileage data of the vehicle as digital data, and the recording medium is stored in the recording medium. A digital operation recording device comprising a reading device for reading digital data and a receiver for receiving position data on a traveling point of the vehicle from a communication satellite, and further stores speed data of the traveling vehicle. And the maximum and minimum speed values within a certain period of time,
A step of obtaining the difference x, a step of determining whether or not the difference x exceeds a predetermined reference value X, and a step of issuing a warning when the difference x exceeds the reference value X, A digital operation recording device comprising a recording medium that stores an operation status monitoring program. 2. A recording medium, such as a removable memory card, mounted on a vehicle for collecting and recording speed data, time data and mileage data of the vehicle as digital data, and the recording medium is stored in the recording medium. What is claimed is: 1.A digital operation record device comprising a reading device for reading digital data and a receiver for receiving position data on a traveling point of the vehicle from a communication satellite. And the step of storing and extracting the maximum and minimum values of speed within a certain fixed time,
The step of obtaining the difference x, the step of determining whether the difference x exceeds a predetermined reference value X, and the step of determining whether the difference x exceeds the reference value X continuously for a certain number of times. A digital operation comprising a recording medium storing an operation status monitoring program, which comprises a step of making a judgment and a step of issuing a warning when the difference x continuously exceeds the reference value X. Recording device. 3. The digital operation recorder according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the operation status monitoring program can be set so as to be automatically operated while traveling on a highway. Digital operation recording device. 4. The digital operation recorder according to claim 1, further comprising a sensor for measuring at least oxygen concentration in exhaust gas and intake pressure. Operation recording device.