JPH1053165A - Accident situation recorder - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain objective information on e an induced cause of an accident after the accident by recording driver information and travel information at least until detection of the accident by an accident detecting means upon detecting the generation of the accident in a vehicle. SOLUTION: Initialization is performed first (step S301), and whether recording is inhibited is judged from a recordable flag (S302). If recording is not inhibited, a counter variables N for counting writing frequency to a storage part after detecting an accident, and an accident flag showing the generation of the accident are reset (S303, S304), and start of interruption processing started every 100ms is set (S305). Whether an accident is generated is always judged (S306), and in case of judging the generation of the accident, the accident flag is set to '1' (S307). The generation of the accident is judged when the acceleration of a vehicle detected by an acceleration sensor exceeds the specified critical value 2G, that is, when the vehicle is suddenly decelerated.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to an accident situation recording apparatus, and more particularly to an accident situation recording apparatus for recording a traffic accident caused by a vehicle.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The state of a traffic accident (hereinafter simply referred to as an accident) caused by a vehicle is reproduced by verification of an accident vehicle and an accident site, and testimony of persons involved and witnesses. However, the situation of the accident reproduced based on these data after the accident is not always accurate due to the lack of evidence or the absence of witnesses. So, the situation around the vehicle,
Record the running state of the vehicle such as the presence or absence of brake, vehicle speed, etc.
There is an accident situation recording device that objectively records the situation when an accident occurs in a record.

[0003]

However, with the conventional accident situation recording device, although the direct cause of the accident and the location of responsibility can be clarified from the recorded accident data, the distant cause that caused the accident is objective. Since no information can be obtained, the analysis results of the accident data cannot always be linked to the reduction of accidents.

[0004] Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an accident situation recording device capable of obtaining objective information on the distant cause of the accident after the accident.

[0005]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, driver information indicating the degree of awakening of the driver detected by the driver state detecting means and the vehicle information detected by the vehicle state detecting means are provided. Recording means for recording traveling information indicating a traveling state is provided, and when the recording means detects that an accident has occurred in the vehicle by the accident detecting means, at least driver information until the accident is detected by the accident detecting means. The driving information is recorded.

[0006] After the accident, the driver's awakening level and the running state of the vehicle until the accident is detected by the accident detection means are recorded, so that the driver's awakening degree is known together with the direct cause of the accident known from the running state of the vehicle. You can learn more about the cause of the accident. In addition, since the driver drives the vehicle in a state in which the driver's awakening level is recorded, the driver is strongly aware of the danger of falling asleep and driving, and the duty to take a break is psychologically imposed.

[0007] In the invention described in claim 2, the driver state detecting means detects biological information of the driver that changes according to the degree of awakening of the driver, and a sign of dozing based on the biological information. The presence of the determination means for determining whether there is a wakefulness is known as the presence or absence of a sign of dozing.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, when the determination means determines that the driver has a sign of falling asleep, an alarm means for issuing an alarm for awakening the driver is provided. The driver is also returned to the awake state.

According to the invention described in claim 4, the recording means includes a storage means set to overwrite the data of the driver information and the driving information to perform endless recording, and the accident detecting means detects a vehicle accident, By overwriting control means for stopping overwriting to the storage means after a predetermined post-detection recording time has elapsed from that time,
The storage capacity of the recording unit can be reduced.

[0010]

FIG. 1 is an overall block diagram of an accident situation recording apparatus according to the present invention. The accident situation recording device is mounted on a vehicle. Driver state detection unit 1 as driver state detection means
Is composed of a pulse sensor 2 as biological information detecting means and an analyzing unit 3 as determining means. The pulse sensor 2 has an electrode mounted on a grip portion of the steering wheel, detects a driver's pulse, and outputs the intensity of the pulse. The analysis unit 3 is provided with the pulsation signal as an input, and comprises an A / D converter for converting the pulsation signal into a digital signal, and an analysis microcomputer to which the digitized pulsation signal output from the A / D converter is input. Yes, 1
Every 0 minutes, it is determined whether the driver of the vehicle has no signs of falling asleep based on the pulsation signal.

The data of the determination result (hereinafter, referred to as driver information) of the sign of the driver falling asleep in the analysis unit 3 is input to a recording unit 7 as recording means.
The recording unit 7 includes a recording control unit 8 as an overwriting control unit and a storage unit 9 as a storage unit. Driver information from the analysis unit 3 is stored in the storage unit 9 via the microcomputer 81 of the recording control unit 8. To be entered.

A sensor section 51 serving as a vehicle state detecting means includes a vehicle speed sensor, an engine speed sensor, a yaw rate sensor,
Travel information such as vehicle speed is detected by a sensor such as a steering angle sensor, a brake switch, a direction indicator, and the like. An interface unit 52 is provided with the sensor signals output from them as inputs. The interface unit 52 converts the sensor signal output as an analog signal, such as a yaw rate sensor, into a digital signal.
It comprises a counter, such as a D converter or an engine speed sensor, which counts sensor signals output in pulses and outputs a digitized count.

The sensor signal digitized by the interface unit 52 from the sensor unit 51 is input to the storage unit 9 via the microcomputer 81 of the recording control unit 8 as vehicle travel information.

The vehicle is also provided with an acceleration sensor 61 as an accident detecting means for detecting the acceleration of the vehicle. A sensor signal output as an analog signal from the acceleration sensor 61 is converted into a digital signal by an A / D converter 62 and is input to a microcomputer 81 constituting an accident detection unit together with the acceleration sensor 61. The acceleration sensor 61 is also a vehicle state detecting means, and the acceleration of the vehicle detected by the acceleration sensor 61 is input to the storage unit 9 via the microcomputer 81 as travel information.

The storage unit 9 is constituted by an SRAM, and the analysis unit 3
The driver information output from the sensor unit 51 and the acceleration sensor 61 and the interface unit 62 and the A / D
The driving information, driver information, and the detection time of the driving information output through the converter 62 (hereinafter, the driver information, the driving information, and the like are referred to as sensor data) are sequentially overwritten every 100 ms and are recorded endlessly. It has become. The storage area of the storage unit 9 is divided into 300, and 30 seconds (100 ms × 300) of sensor data can be recorded. The microcomputer 81 controls the overwriting of the storage unit 9.

The analyzing section 3 has a speaker 4 as an alarm means.
Is connected, and the speaker 4 is driven by the analyzing unit 3 and emits an alarm when the analyzing unit 3 determines that the driver has a sign of falling asleep.

The operation of the accident situation recording device will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 2 shows the main routine of the analysis unit 3, in which the data in the pulsation signal memory in the analysis microcomputer is cleared (step 101), the 10-minute timer is reset (step 102), and an interrupt is issued. Permit (step 103). Thereafter, hold is performed (step 104).

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of an interrupt process of the analysis unit 3 which is started when a pulsation is detected by the pulse sensor 1, and measures an elapsed time (hereinafter referred to as a detection interval) from the previous interrupt process (step 201). . This detection interval and the pulsation signal data detected by the pulse sensor 1 are stored in a memory (step 202). Next, it is determined whether or not the timer has counted 10 minutes (step 203).
If the 0 minute has not been counted, the interrupt processing ends. That is, the pulsation signal data is stored in the memory every time the pulsation is detected by the pulse sensor 2 until the timer counts 10 minutes.

If the timer has counted 10 minutes (step 203), fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis of the pulsation signal data for 10 minutes stored in the memory and the data comprising the detection interval is performed to analyze the pulsation signal. A frequency spectrum is obtained (step 204). FIG. 4 shows an example of the frequency spectrum of the pulsation signal. The peak at approximately 1 Hz corresponds to the so-called heart rate. And 0.1 ~
A peak appears at 0.3 Hz (0.2 Hz in the illustrated example) according to the driver's arousal level, and the peak becomes high when the driver is dozing. From the obtained frequency spectrum, it is determined whether there is any sign of dozing from the peak of the pulsation signal at 0.1 to 0.3 Hz (step 205).

In step 205, 0.1-0.3H
If there is no peak of the pulsation signal at z, it is determined that the driver is in the awake state, and that fact is output to the recording control unit 8 as driver information data (step 207). Then, the timer is reset (step 210), and the interrupt processing ends. If a peak of the pulsation signal is found at 0.1 to 0.3 Hz in step 205, the level of the peak is compared with a predetermined threshold to determine the magnitude (step 20).
6). The threshold value is set in advance by obtaining data of a peak before a person falls asleep by an experiment or the like. If the peak level is equal to or lower than the threshold value, the driver is determined to be in the awake state, and the process proceeds to step 207 as in the case where there is no peak of the pulsation signal.

If the peak level is equal to or higher than the threshold value in step 206, it is determined that the driver has a sign of dozing, and the fact is output to the recording control unit 8 as driver information data (step 208). A warning sound is issued from the speaker 4 (step 209), and the process proceeds to step 210.

FIG. 5 shows a main routine of the recording control section 8. First, an initial setting is performed (step 301). Next, it is determined based on the recordable flag Z whether or not recording is prohibited (step 302). The recordable flag Z is 1 when recording is possible, and is 0 when recording is not possible. If the recording is not prohibited, the count variable N for counting the number of times of writing to the storage unit 9 after detecting the accident and the accident flag indicating the occurrence of the accident are reset (steps 303 and 30).
4) Set the start of interrupt processing to be activated every 100 ms (step 305).

It is always determined whether or not an accident has occurred (step 306). If it is determined that an accident has occurred, the accident flag is set to 1 (step 307). Here, it is determined that an accident has occurred when the acceleration of the vehicle detected by the acceleration sensor 61 (FIG. 1) exceeds a predetermined lower limit 2G, that is, when the vehicle suddenly decelerates.

FIG. 6 shows an interrupt process started every 100 ms. When the accident flag is 0, that is, when no accident has occurred (step 401), the sensor data, that is, at step 207 or step 208 in FIG. Driver information data output to the recording control unit 8;
The travel information data output from the sensor unit 51 and the acceleration sensor 61 via the interface unit 52 and the A / D converter 62 and the detection times are stored in the storage unit 9 in which the data with the oldest write time is stored. The area is overwritten (steps 402 and 403), and the interrupt processing ends (step 404). That is, if no accident has occurred, the storage unit 9 updates the sensor data with the oldest write time to the latest data at each interruption process, and stores the sensor data for 30 seconds up to the present.

When an accident occurs, the accident flag becomes 1 (step 306 in FIG. 5).
Is incremented. Next, it is determined whether the count variable N is a specified value (step 406). The specified value is the number of times sensor data is written to the storage unit 9 after detecting an accident, and 100 ms × the specified value is the recording time after detection. Here, the specified value is set to 50. If the count variable N has not reached the specified value, steps 402 to 404 are executed. That is, the count variable N is increased by one step at step 405 every interruption processing, but steps 402 to 404 are executed until the count value reaches the specified value.
The data is newly overwritten in the storage unit 9 every 0 ms.

When the count variable N reaches the specified value (step 406), that is, 5 seconds (100
After the elapse of (ms × 50), the storage unit 9 updates the 5-second sensor data with the oldest write time to the 5-second sensor data after the accident occurred, and the sensor data for 25 seconds up to the accident occurrence time and after the accident occurrence For 5 seconds is stored. Then, the process proceeds from step 406 to step 407, where the subsequent interruption is prohibited (step 407), and the erasure of the sensor data stored in the storage unit 9 at that time is prohibited (step 408). If an accident occurs early after the apparatus is started, a writable area remains in the storage unit 9. Then, it is determined whether or not there is more capacity to write in the storage unit 9 (step 409). If there is no write area left, the recordable flag is set to 0 (recordable not possible) (step 410), and the operation of the apparatus is terminated (step 410). 413). If an area to be written remains in the storage unit 9 in step 409, the recordable flag is set to 1 (recordable) (step 411), the start of interrupt processing is set (step 412), and the operation of the apparatus ends (step 413). ).

The accident situation recording device is collected after the accident handling work, and the sensor data before and after the accident recorded in the storage unit 9 is attached to the analysis of the accident situation. Since the direct cause of the accident, such as vehicle speed and braking timing, is recorded as well as the presence or absence of the driver's drowsiness, objective information can also be obtained as to the distant cause of the accident. That is, it becomes clear whether there is a causal relationship between the driver's arousal level and the accident.

Also, the presence or absence of the driver's signs of falling asleep is recorded by the accident situation recording device, so that the driver is usually strongly aware of the danger of falling asleep, and the duty to take a break is psychologically imposed. They will take a break according to the warning.

Although the time range for one FFT analysis is set to 10 minutes, it can be changed as appropriate. In addition, the analysis frequency is set to the range of time to be subjected to one FFT analysis, and the new pulsation signal data is analyzed for each analysis. The range of the time may be, for example, 5 minutes, and in the analysis before and after, the pulsation signal data for the 4 minutes may overlap.

The biological information of the driver to be used for the determination of the sign of the driver falling asleep is not necessarily limited to the information described in the above embodiment, and known biological information serving as an index of the arousal level may be used. For example, it may be a palm potential using the wrist potential as a reference potential. It is known that the higher the arousal level is, the greater the potential of the palm becomes negative, which is about 60 mV in the awake state and about 30 mV in the dozing state. Further, the blink frequency of the driver or the opening / closing speed of the eyelids may be used. In the transient state from awakening to dozing, the blink frequency increases temporarily,
It is known that the opening and closing speed of the eyelids becomes slow. Alternatively, biological information such as brain waves and respiratory rate may be used. In addition, a lamp that is turned on at random during driving and a switch that is operated by the driver while watching this lamp is provided, and the reaction time from when the lamp is turned on to when the driver operates the switch is also an indicator of arousal level. Information.

Although the warning to the driver and the driver information are binary with and without the sign of dozing, the case with the sign of dozing may be further divided into two or more steps according to the magnitude of the peak. .

The driver information determined by the analysis unit is recorded in the storage unit. However, the data of the pulsation signal and the detection time thereof may be recorded together with the driver information or instead of the driver information. Good. In this case, since the FFT analysis is performed based on the pulsation signal or the like remaining in the recording, the recording time needs to be long (for example, 10 minutes). Further, the storage unit is configured to endlessly record the sensor data for 30 seconds and leave it in the record only when an accident occurs. However, at least the driver information data may be recorded in the record of all the running data. In this case, the driver information data can be used, for example, for guidance of the driver by the manager of the vehicle in the business entity or the like.

An imaging device such as a CCD camera may be provided in the vehicle compartment to photograph the situation outside the vehicle or the driver, and the video may be included as travel information or driver information.

Although the occurrence of an accident is determined by the binary determination of the acceleration of the vehicle, a switch which operates for an acceleration exceeding a predetermined threshold value may be used. Alternatively, the determination may be made by performing a binary determination on the yaw rate detected by the yaw rate sensor.

It is also possible to activate the air conditioner or to increase the intensity of the air conditioner during the operation, together with the warning of the driver falling asleep. The supply of the fragrance and the seat on which the driver sits may be vibrated. By these means, it is possible not only to encourage a break but also to refresh the driver.

Numerical values such as the recording time can be appropriately set according to the required recording time, recording density, and the like.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an accident situation recording device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a first flowchart illustrating the operation of the accident situation recording device of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a second flowchart illustrating the operation of the accident situation recording device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a graph illustrating the operation of the accident situation recording device of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a third flowchart illustrating the operation of the accident situation recording device of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a fourth flowchart illustrating the operation of the accident situation recording device of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Driver state detection part (driver state detection means) 2 Pulse sensor (biological information detection means) 3 Analysis part (judgment means) 4 Speaker (alarm means) 51 Sensor part (vehicle state detection means) 61 Acceleration sensor (accident detection) Means, vehicle state detection means) 7 recording unit (recording means) 81 microcomputer (accident detection means, overwriting control means) 9 storage unit (storage means)

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A driver state detecting means for detecting driver information indicating a degree of awakening of a driver of a vehicle, a vehicle state detecting means for detecting driving information indicating a running state of a vehicle, and an accident has occurred in the vehicle. An accident situation recording device comprising: an accident detecting means for detecting a situation; and recording means for recording at least driver information and traveling information until the accident is detected by the accident detecting means. 2. The accident situation recording device according to claim 1, wherein said driver state detecting means is detected by biological information detecting means for detecting biological information of a driver which changes according to a degree of arousal, and detected by biological information detecting means. Determining means for determining whether there is a sign of dozing based on the driver's biological information, and using the driver information as the driver information based on the presence or absence of the sign of dozing of the driver. 3. The accident situation recording device according to claim 1, further comprising an alarm unit for issuing an alarm for awakening the driver when the determination unit determines that the driver has a sign of falling asleep. An accident situation recording device characterized by the following. 4. The accident situation recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said recording means is configured to overwrite driver information and driving information and perform endless recording, and An accident situation recording device comprising: an overwriting control unit that stops overwriting the storage unit when a predetermined recording time has elapsed after the detection of the accident when the detecting unit detects the accident. .