WO2016184611A1

WO2016184611A1 - Detecting lane ends on roads

Info

Publication number: WO2016184611A1
Application number: PCT/EP2016/057868
Authority: WO
Inventors: Reinhard Jurk
Original assignee: Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft
Priority date: 2015-05-21
Filing date: 2016-04-11
Publication date: 2016-11-24
Also published as: EP3298600A1; DE102015209360A1; EP3298600B1

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for detecting the end of a lane, comprising: receiving activation notices from vehicles; wherein the notices comprise data regarding the location of the vehicle at which the turn signal of the vehicle is activated; calculating spatial distributions for the location data; detecting the end of a lane on the basis of the distributions.

Description

Detecting driving spurs on roads

The invention relates to a method for detecting the change of a Fah rspurkonfiguration, in particular the beginning or end of a lane, and a correspondingly directed electronic computing device. Nowadays, it is well-known to use information from central offices such as the police or floating car data to determine the traffic flow on roads and in particular motorways. This information is stored in central databases in digital road maps and distributed to road transport vehicles (in particular cars and trucks) via wireless data links such as UMTS or LTE mobile communications.

Temporary lane constrictions, through which individual lanes are closed, are frequently encountered in road traffic, for example due to hikes on motorways, events or accidents today. These events are not stored in central databases today, or only a little. At the same time, this information also provides important information to the driver of a vehicle and may require special driver attention and maneuvering to enable safe participation in the traffic. In order to be particularly helpful for coping with the driving task, this information must be as up-to-date as possible. Future driver assistance functions of a vehicle (for example a car) need exact information about their environment that goes beyond the range detectable by sensors of the vehicle. These sensory non-detectable information can be obtained via digital road maps. For many driver assistance functions, however, this information must be continuously updated. For this purpose, a stored in Fah rzeug digital road map with a currently held n digital road maps in a server or backend be adjusted and updated. The information that needs to be kept up-to-date relates, for example, to construction sites, road changes or traffic flow. On the one hand, this information must be initialized and, on the other hand, continuously verified or corrected. DE 10 2013 220 430 A1 discloses a method according to which sensors of the vehicle record measured values and warn other vehicles by means of indications of danger.

From DE 10 2012 223 890 A1 it is known that a vehicle can send information about its state to a central server.

In order to keep the information regarding track constrictions and track closures as up-to-date as possible in principle, measurements are provided by participating vehicles on the road. These do not have to be special measuring vehicles, but may also be private cars.

A difficulty with the use of typical cars is that only a few of these cars, for example, are equipped with sufficiently accurate and reliable cameras that are suitable for detecting lanes.

The invention is thus based on the object of determining the end of lanes by means of statistical evaluations of measurements of vehicles participating in the road traffic.

This object is solved by the subject matters of the independent claims. Advantageous developments are defined in the dependent claims.

According to a first aspect of the invention, a method for detecting the change of the lane configuration, in particular the end or beginning of a lane, comprises: receiving activation instructions of vehicles; the instructions including information on the location of the vehicle to which the direction indicator of the vehicle is activated; Calculating spatial distributions for the location information; Detecting the end or beginning of a lane based on the distributions. Activation can be understood as the initial activation of the direction indicator, or when the direction indicator is deactivated again. In the latter case, the duration of the activation can also be included in the note. Furthermore, it can be assumed as an activation only if the direction indicator is activated and a Len kradbewegung or Fahrzeugbe- movement indicates the changing of a lane. The place will be determined according to the fulfillment of these activation criteria. The location can be determined by means of satellite navigation (GPS, Glonass, Galileo). The methods are typically executed by a central processing unit (also called server or backend). The detected end or the recognized beginning can be noted in a digital road map. Direction indicators are sometimes called turn signals. A spatial distribution can be formed by the frequency of indications with the same or in the same area (of several areas) location information. The term "spatial" here means a subdivision in a spatial dimension ("street km"), two spatial dimensions or three spatial dimensions sections, so does not necessarily have to be three-dimensional. A lane configuration is understood here to be the number of lanes for a direction of travel, and in some implementations also to be understood as driving maneuvers (right / left lanes). It is therefore proposed herein to transmit the activation of the direction indicator of vehicles together with the location of the activation to a central location. This central location carries out a statistical evaluation of the indications, in which the distribution of activations of the direction indicators is evaluated with regard to the location of the activation (in some implementations also with regard to time). This distribution is examined to see if it indicates the end or beginning of a lane. On a road section with non-changing lanes, the activations of direction indicators are substantially equally distributed. At or before the end of a lane, however, the vehicles on the terminating lane will leave this lane. At the beginning of a lane, vehicles will switch to the starting lane. This means that there is an accumulation of activations of direction indicators before and at the end or at the beginning of a lane. This spatial distribution of activation of the direction indicators is used to determine the end or beginning of a lane. The distribution can be examined for clusters of activations in road sections of 5m, 10m, 15m, 20m, 50m or 100m or more. Direction indicators are present in all vehicles. At the same time (also supported by the mandatory e-call of the EU, 2013/0165 (COD)), in principle all vehicles will have a wireless data connection in the future. This allows a large number of vehicles to participate in the process and send directions to the location and activation of direction indicators to a central location. The installation of additional complex and expensive hardware or software (for example, cameras) is not necessary. As a result, on the one hand, the accuracy of the detection is increased, on the other hand, the time delay between changes in the lane configuration on a road (a lane ends suddenly) and reduces the detection at the central location.

The provision of up-to-date information about the existing lanes to be used on the route in the future is an important piece of information both for a human driver and for highly automated driving. Some driver assistance functions can not perform an autonomous lane change and the knowledge of an approaching trace can therefore be used for the notification of the driver and production of full attention and, if necessary, take over the full vehicle control.

The necessary permanent monitoring of the road network with regard to newly occurring track ends and track starts and track number information can be implemented cost-effectively, since no special sensors (strictly speaking, no sensors) are necessary. The direction indicator instead uses a signal that is available anyway.

According to another aspect of the invention, a method for detecting the end or beginning of a lane comprises: receiving indications from vehicles; wherein the indications include information about the location of the vehicle and the activation direction, namely the direction in which the direction indicator of the vehicle is activated at the location; Calculating spatial distributions for the location information and the activation direction; Detecting the end or beginning of a lane based on the distributions. In an implementation, the recognition thus takes into account whether the references with location information in the same spatial area have essentially the same activation. have sufficient direction. On edge tracks (far left or far right, for example), vehicles at the end of a lane must always change lanes in one direction. Such an anomaly of distribution thus indicates a blockage of the right or left edge track. An accumulation of directional activations in both directions indicates the end of a middle lane. The same applies to incipient lanes on the road edges, the activation directions are of course reversed.

Typically, the hints are associated with timestamps, wherein the calculating comprises: calculating the spatial and temporal distribution for the location indications and the activation direction. The timestamps can be assigned by the vehicles or when receiving the timestamps at the backend. The method is particularly suitable to detect temporary and sudden changes (ends of lanes), for example by accidents or hikes. For this purpose, spatial distributions are created for (regular) time segments (for example 1 s, 5 s, 30 s, 1 min, 5 min, 10 min or more) based on the indications received in these time segments. Likewise, spatial distributions can each be created after receiving a certain number of hints. The successively created distributions are examined for changes. In some implementations, anomalies (or trace detection) are identified by the timing of distributions, that is, based on a change in the accumulation of activations of the direction indicators. A basic distribution (or if, for example, the activation directions are to be taken into account, several basic distributions) is calculated, for example, for instructions received over a longer period of time. Areas or locations of the distribution calculated for a period of time are compared with the corresponding area or location of the basic distribution. If the deviation determined in the comparison meets a criterion (for example, if it is greater than a predetermined threshold value), a track end or track start is assumed for the location or area.

Herein, it is disclosed not to use a "sensor" for detecting the number of lanes, but a temporal -spatial analysis of blinker signals. The algorithm in the backend calculates a temporal and spatial distribution of blinker signals. Trace detection may be due to several effects: (1) general left / right blinking in overtaking or shuffling operations, (2) bursting with accumulation unidirectional change in the distribution of the flashing signals due to a sudden change in the road network, eg. a track end caused by a construction site.

In a further development, the method further comprises: determining a location at which the end or beginning of a lane is suspected; Sending a request in the area of this place to specify details of the place in the clues and / or to send clues in this area (more frequently). On the basis of evaluations of information or information provided by authorities, the central office may assume that a traffic lane ends or begins in one area. In this case, the central office may send vehicles near the suspected end, or vehicles that will pass through this area, to provide more accurate location information. Likewise, it can be provided in the method that not all vehicles with each activation of the direction indicator send a message (to reduce the data volume to be transmitted mens). In such a case, the central office may instruct that more or all vehicles in the area or area will pass by, sending clues to each activation.

The methods of the invention can also be used to update the number of lanes recorded in digital road maps. To this end, the methods further include: providing a digital road map indicating at least some roads also the number of Fahrspu ren; Associating the known end of a lane with a position on a road; Using the recognized end of a lane for particular temporary re-determination of the number of lanes at the position of the road. In this way, the determination of the end of a driving lane can be used to determine the total number of driving lanes.

Another aspect of the invention relates to the arithmetic unit, which is set up to carry out the method.

From the vehicle view, the following inventive method is performed: determining the location of an activation of the direction indicator by a vehicle; Sending an activation notice comprising the location of a central Place (via a wireless data connection). When a turn signal is considered activated is described above. The determination of the activation is also carried out by the vehicle. Another aspect relates to the vehicle that is set up to carry out the method. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

Fig. 1 shows schematically a traffic situation and electronic computing means according to one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENT

1 schematically shows a traffic situation and electronic calculation means according to one exemplary embodiment. A road 2 includes two lanes for one direction of travel. A vehicle 5 is injured in the right lane and blocks this lane, so that this lane ends just before the vehicle 5. This disorder is of a temporal nature and has occurred suddenly.

The server 1 maintains a digital road map, in addition to the traffic flow and the number of lanes of each street is displayed. The data of the digital road map are in turn distributed to moving vehicles, on the one hand to alert drivers early to unexpected events, on the other hand to improve the function of driver assistance systems.

The server 1 receives activation instructions from the vehicles participating in the traffic. It should be assumed here that the vehicle 5 has not sent a message to the server 1 that it has crashed and the right Fah rspur blocked. The other vehicles 3a, 3b, 3c and 4 are set up to activate this activity with an indication including also the location of the activation and the activation direction to the server 1 when the direction indicator is activated. In Fig. 1, the vehicles 3a, 3b and 3c send an activity notice to the server because their turn signal is activated. Vehicle 4 sends no indication in the situation shown in FIG. In operation, the server 1 calculates a basic spatial distribution of activations in one direction (for example on the right) and a spatial basic distribution of the activation instructions received for a longer period (1 h, 3 h, 5 h, 1 day, 2 days, 1 week or longer) Activations in the other direction. The space division takes place in 10m sections of the road, ie all location indications that are within a 10m section are considered as belonging to this section. If, for example, 5 activation messages each with a location specification that is within a predetermined 10 m section are received, then the basic distribution for this section has the frequency 5. The entire distribution maps only 50m, 00m, 200m, 500m or more of the road to reduce storage requirements and complexity.

For the current determination as to whether a hitherto unknown lane end has arisen, the server 1 calculates a spatial distribution for each activation direction from the indications received in the last 10 min. For each section and activity direction (ie, each distribution), the difference between the frequency of the current distribution and the frequency of the corresponding section and the activity direction of the basic distribution are determined. If the difference exceeds a threshold value (for example, 3 or 4), a new lane end is detected. Due to the activation direction of the distribution that exceeds the threshold value, it is detected whether it is the right or left lane that ends. The new lane end is noted in the digital road map.

As an alternative to the above procedure, the basic distribution and the current distribution can only be calculated for the activation as a whole (ie without distinction to the left and right). In this case, only the information is generated that one lane is less available.

Claims

1 . A method for recognizing the lane configuration of a road, in particular the end or beginning of a lane; full:

Receiving activation instructions of vehicles; the indications include information on the location of the vehicle to which the direction indicator of the vehicle is activated;

Calculating spatial distributions for the location information;

Detecting the end or beginning of a lane based on the distributions.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the indicia also include an indication of the activation direction, namely the direction in which the direction indicator of the vehicle is activated at the location; wherein the spatial distributions are also calculated for the activation directions.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein is taken into account when recognizing whether the clues with location information in the same spatial area substantially the same

Have activation direction.

4. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the recognition of the accumulation of clues with locations in the same spatial area is taken into account.

5. A method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the indicia are associated with timestamps, wherein the computing comprises u:

Calculate the spatial and temporal distribution of the location information.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein recognizing comprises: Recognition of a temporal change of the distribution.

The method of any one of the preceding claims, further comprising:

Determining a location where the end or beginning of a lane is suspected;

Send a request in the area of this place to specify details of the place in the notes and / or to send any information in this area.

The method of any one of the preceding claims, further comprising:

Providing a digital road map indicating at least some roads also the number of lanes;

Associating the detected end or start of a lane with a position on a road;

Using the recognized end or beginning of a lane for particular temporary re-determination of the number of lanes at the position of the road.

A method of sending measured values, comprising:

Determining the location of activation of the direction indicator by a vehicle;

Sending an activation notice comprising the location information to a central location.

Electronic computing means adapted to carry out a method according to any one of claims 1 to 8. A vehicle comprising positioning means and a wireless communication transmitter, the vehicle being arranged to carry out the method of claim 9.