WO2020064080A1

WO2020064080A1 - Method and apparatus for capturing road conditions

Info

Publication number: WO2020064080A1
Application number: PCT/EP2018/075779
Authority: WO
Inventors: Thorsten Lohmar; Maciej MUEHLEISEN; Ali El Essaili; Mohamed Ibrahim
Original assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (Publ)
Priority date: 2018-09-24
Filing date: 2018-09-24
Publication date: 2020-04-02

Abstract

A method in a coordination unit (120) and a coordination unit (120) for monitoring a road condition is provided. The method comprises or initiates the step of determining that the condition of a road should be determined. The method further comprises or initiates the step of sending an instruction to at least one vehicle (100) which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle (100), instructing to sense the road condition. The method further comprises or initiates the step of receiving, in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor of said at least one vehicle (100). The invention further refers to a method in a vehicle (100) and a vehicle (100) for monitoring road condition, comprising or initiating the steps of receiving, from a coordination unit (120), an indication to determine the condition of a road, sensing, by a sensor, the condition of said road; and sending the sensed condition information to the coordination unit (120).

Description

Method and apparatus for capturing road conditions

Technical Field

The invention is about a method in a coordination unit and a coordination unit for monitoring a road condition. Further, the invention is about a method in a vehicle and a vehicle for monitoring a road condition.

Background

Vehicles are carrying more and more sensors, like digital cameras or radar sensors, for distance measurements, road sign detection or Vulnerable Road User (VRU) detection. Vehicle OEMs would like to continuously upstream sensor data, like videos, which is not feasible because of high costs. The uplink capacity of mobile systems is limited, and it is not efficient to just upstream data from all available vehicle mounted camera or other sensors into the infrastructure for post-processing. Further, a lot of sensor data is redundant because the situation is often static. One solution may be a post-processing at the vehicle before uploading the data to the infrastructure. Flowever, this post-processing is not favored by the vehicles OEMs because this will increase the costs and a change in the post processing methods must be introduced to a huge number of vehicles which is costly and not efficient. On the other side road authorities and cities are interested to leverage vehicles to reduce maintenance overhead.

Summary

It is an object of the present invention to introduce a more efficient technique for road condition sensing. This object is achieved by the independent claims. Advantageous embodiments are described in the dependent claims.

According to a first aspect, a method in a coordination unit for monitoring a road condition is provided. The method comprises or initiates the step of determining that the condition of a road should be determined. The method further comprises or initiates the step of sending an instruction to at least one vehicle which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle, instructing to sense the road condition. The method further comprises or initiates the step of receiving, in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor of said at least one vehicle.

According to a second aspect a method in a vehicle for monitoring road condition is provided. The method comprises or initiates the step of receiving, from a coordination unit, an indication to determine the condition of a road and sensing, by a sensor, the condition of said road. The method further comprises or initiates the step of sending the sensed condition information to the coordination unit.

According to a third aspect a coordination unit for monitoring a road condition is provided. The coordination unit is adapted to perform or initiate determining that the condition of a road should be determined and sending an instruction to at least one vehicle which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle, instructing to sense the road condition. The coordination unit is further adapted to receive, in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor of said at least one vehicle.

According to a fourth aspect a vehicle for monitoring road conditions is provided. The vehicle is adapted to perform or initiate the step of receiving, from a coordination unit, an indication to determine the condition of a road and sensing, by a sensor, the condition of said road. The vehicle is further adapted to perform or initiate the step of sending the sensed condition information to the coordination unit.

The present invention also concerns computer programs comprising portions of software codes or instructions in order to implement the method as described above when operated by at least one respective processing unit of a user device and a recipient device. The computer program can be stored on a computer-readable medium. The computer-readable medium can be a permanent or rewritable memory within the user device or the recipient device or located externally. The respective computer program can also be transferred to the user device or recipient device for example via a cable or a wireless link as a sequence of signals.

Brief Description of the Figures

In the following, the invention will further be described with reference to exemplary embodiments illustrated in the figures, in which: Fig. 1 shows a schematic illustration of a scenario in which vehicles and a coordination unit are in communication,

Fig. 2 shows a schematic illustration of another scenario in which vehicles are located in and outside and area to be sensed,

Fig. 3 shows an exemplary sequence diagram of a method in a coordination unit according to an embodiment,

Fig. 4 shows an exemplary sequence diagram of a method in a vehicle according to an embodiment,

Fig. 5 shows a block diagram of a coordination unit according to an embodiment,

Fig. 6 shows a block diagram of a vehicle according to an embodiment.

Detailed Description

In the below, for purposes of explanation and not limitation, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. It will be apparent to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced in other embodiments that depart from these specific details. For example, although the exemplary embodiments are described in connection with LTE or NR (New Radio) standard terminology to illustrate the present invention, they are equally applicable to other kinds of mobile communication systems. Also, the invention may be practiced in any network to which mobile users may attach. For example, the present invention is applicable to, besides cellular networks, Local Area Networks (LANs), Wireless LANs (WLANs), or similar wireless networks.

Those skilled in the art will further appreciate that the functions explained herein below may be implemented using hardware circuitry, software means, or a combination thereof. The software means may be in conjunction with a programmed microprocessor or a general-purpose computer, using an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) and/or Digital Signal Processors (DSPs). It will also be apparent that when the present invention is described as a method, it may also be embodied in a computer processor and a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory is encoded with one or more programs that perform the method when executed by the processor. Within the context of the present application, the term vehicle refers to a mobile entity, like a car, a truck or a train. The vehicle may be equipped with a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) comprising unique identities such as IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) and/or TMSI (Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity) associated with a subscriber using the vehicle. The presence of a SIM within a vehicle (or the communication module of said vehicle) customizes the vehicle or the communication unit of said vehicle uniquely with a subscription of the subscriber.

Within the context of the present application, the term “communication network” or short “network” may particularly denote a collection of nodes or entities, related transport links, and associated management needed for running a service, for example a telephony service or a packet transport service. Depending on the service, different node types or entities may be utilized to realize the service. A network operator owns the communication network and offers the implemented services to its subscribers. Typical examples of a communication network are radio access network (such as 2G, GSM, 3G, WCDMA, CDMA, LTE, NR, WLAN, Wi-Fi), mobile backhaul network, or core network such as IMS, CS Core, PS Core.

Within the context of the present application, the term road may particularly denote a street, way, railroad or any other kind of path which can be used by a vehicle. The condition of a road within the context of the present application may denote as a structural condition, a state of repair of a road, traffic situation on said road, like traffic jam or may particularly denote as road or traffic signs. Further, within the context of the present application, the condition of a road may denote as any other exterior factor which may influence the handling of a vehicle on said road, like smoke or dust or any other weather phenomenon.

The illustration in the drawing is schematic. In different drawings, similar or identical elements are provided with the same reference signs or with reference signs which are different from one another in the first digit.

Fig. 1 shows a schematic illustration of a scenario in which vehicles and a coordination unit are in communication. This figure depicts to areas (Area 1 and Area 2) in which vehicles 100 are located. The vehicles of both areas are in communicating via a cellular network infrastructure 1 10 with a coordination unit 120. The cellular infrastructure or network may consist of a radio network and a core network which is not depicted in figure 1 . The radio network may be any kind of network, like Long Term Evolution (LTE) or New Radio (NR) network or a mix of both technologies. In other words, the radio network may consist of e enhanced Node B (eNB) or a next generation Node B (gNB) or both. The radio network is connected to a core network. The core network may comprise a connection to the coordination unit 120 as a service function. The coordination unit 120 may be located inside the core network or outside the core network. The coordination unit 120 is aware of the position and/or trajectory (movement direction) of each of the vehicles which are registered in the system. The position and/or trajectory of each vehicle may be in terms of the area identification. As an example, the coordination unit 120 is aware of the position and/or trajectory of a vehicle 100 in Area 1 101 . However, it may also be possible that the coordination unit 120 knows the geographic location of each vehicle based on GPS information, provided by the vehicles. The areas may be defined by a square shaped territory (e.g. a tile) or may be a customized shape, e.g. a street or suburb. Further, the coordination system may be aware of a route the vehicle is taking - e.g. based on knowledge from a navigation system in which a route has been determined to reach a specific target. The coordination unit 120 may be able to send commands and requests via the cellular network to the vehicles and the vehicles may be able to upload sensor data, like videos, and position information to the coordination unit 120 via said cellular network. In the exemplary embodiment of figure 1 the registered vehicles comprise a front facing camera as a sensor. The coordination unit 120 may also be aware of the type of sensors available at each of the registered vehicles. The type of sensor may also comprise the ability of the sensor, like resolution of a video or frame rate. A sensor may also be a noise sensor, a gyroscope or a radar sensor. A noise sensor may be able to collect the sound of the wheels rolling on a street. A gyroscope could be used to measure the acceleration of a vehicle.

Fig. 2 shows a schematic illustration of another scenario in which vehicles are located in and outside and area 210 to be sensed. This area 210 encloses a street 200 which should be sensed. It may also be possible that the area to be sensed is only defined by a specific street 200. The coordination unit 120, which may be part of a street capture coordination system, may be fully automated and/or manually controlled. The decision on which area or street to be monitored or captured could be done manually by a user input (e.g. a human operator) or automatically by a scheduler. The coordination unit may be instructed via a scheduler to monitor a specific area 210 or 200 once per time frame (e.g. once per month or year). According to a further embodiment the coordination unit 120 may receive an indication of an incident from at least one of the vehicles 220, 230. This incident may be a change in the condition of the road from a previous condition to a current condition. One example is a pothole or road hole which may be detected by a gyroscope sensor and may have been communicated to the coordination unit 120 as an emergency incident. Another example may be a change in the environment compared to a map or information provided to the vehicles. The coordination unit 120 may receive more than one indication of a change in the environment and may only react on said indication if a specific number of reports have been received for said specific incident.

After the coordination unit 120 has determined that the condition of a road or street should be determined (sensed or monitored or captured), the coordination unit 120 selects a set of registered vehicles within or close to said road or street or area to execute the capturing of the road condition. The identity of each vehicle, and/or its position and/or its trajectory may be stored in a database which will be updated periodically or each time a vehicle enters or leaves an area. The coordination unit 120 sends an instruction to at least one vehicle which is determined based on the position information of said vehicle, instructing to sense he road condition. According to the example of figure 2 the coordination unit 120 determines that the specific road 200 should be monitored. It may then select vehicles 220 and 230 because these vehicles are located on said road 200. Further the coordination unit 120 may also select vehicle 240 which is heading towards the road 200 having the respective trajectory. However, this vehicle 240 may only start the capturing or sensing process if it enters the area or road to be monitored. The coordination unit 120 may not select vehicle 250 which is heading away from said area or road. The coordination unit 120 may then send, to each of the determined vehicles 220, 230 and 240, an instruction to sense the road condition.

In response to the instruction the coordination unit receives condition information of said road 200, determined by a sensor of the selected or determined vehicles which has been instructed to sense the condition of the road. This allows a selected and coordinated way to select only relevant data to be uploaded and therefore reduce traffic on the air interface. The condition information, which could be a video or any other sensor data, like acceleration data of a gyroscope to sense the roughness of the road surface, will be provided to a post processing unit which determines a road condition information from said information. The post processing of the sensed data may be done by using machine learning algorithm. The coordination unit 120 may receive further requests from the post processing to retrieve still missing data. This request will then be used by the coordination unit to send further instructions to the vehicles to sense conditions. A centralized post processing allows a coordinated and centralized way to manage data and upgrades on the post processing capability. Further, the processing costs in a vehicle will be reduced. Another advantage is that analyzing data from multiple vehicles in a cloud could be superior to analyze data from only a single vehicle using an on-board unit.

According to a further embodiment of the invention the coordination unit 120 may further take into consideration the capability of the at least one vehicle 220, 230 and 240 out of the determined subset of vehicles. It may be possible that only one vehicle out of the subset of vehicles comprises a sensor which is able to fulfill the requirements of the coordination unit 120. One requirement may be a minimum video resolution which is necessary for postprocessing at a street capture coordination system. If only a subset of the determined vehicles comprises a video camera with said specific resolution the coordination unit 120 may only select said subset of vehicles to capture the road condition. The coordination unit 120 may also consider subscription details of the vehicles, like maximum possible bandwidth. According to a further embodiment the coordination unit 120 may also have knowledge about the network coverage in a given area based on the subscription of the vehicle and may only select vehicles having a good coverage or which coverage is above a certain threshold.

According to a further embodiment the coordination unit 120 may provide an indication of a timeframe to each of the determined vehicles 220, 230 and 240 until which the condition information must be determined. If the timeframe is missed, the instruction for capturing the condition of a road 200 is not valid anymore and should be deleted or ignored. This restriction may reduce the workload on each of the vehicles to an upper limit so that other vehicles with different timeframes may take over this task.

Fig. 3 shows a flowchart 300 for illustrating a method which may be utilized for implementing the illustrated concepts in a coordination unit 120. The method may be performed by said coordination unit 120 which is responsible for monitoring road conditions and comprises or initiates the step 302 of determining that the condition of a road should be determined. In a further step 304 the method comprises or initiates the step of sending an instruction to at least one vehicle which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle, instructing to sense the road condition. In a further step 306 the method comprises or initiates receiving, in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor of said at least one vehicle. If a processor-based implementation of the coordination unit 120 is used, the steps of the method may be performed or initiated by one or more processors of the coordination unit 120. In such a case the coordination unit may further comprise a memory in which program code for implementing the below described functionalities is stored.

Fig. 5 shows a block diagram of a coordination unit 500 according to an embodiment. The coordination unit 500 comprises a processor 504 and a memory 506. Said memory 506 contains instructions executable by said processor 504, whereby said coordination unit 500 is operative to determine that the condition of a road should be determined. The coordination unit 500 is further operative to send, via an interface 502, an instruction to at least one vehicle which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle, instructing to sense the road condition, and to receive, in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor of said at least one vehicle. It is to be understood that the structure as illustrated in Fig. 5 is merely schematic and that the coordination unit 500 may actually include further components which, for the sake of clarity, have not been illustrated, e.g., further interfaces. For example, multiple network interfaces could be provided which are configured to allow communication with different types of other nodes. Also, it is to be understood that the storage entity or memory 506 may include further types of program code modules, which have not been illustrated.

Fig. 4 shows a flowchart 400 for illustrating a method which may be utilized for implementing the illustrated concepts in a vehicle 100. The method may be performed by said vehicle 100 for monitoring road conditions and comprises or initiates the step 402 of receiving, from a coordination unit 120, an indication to determine the condition of a road. The method further comprises or initiates sensing in a next step 404, by a sensor, the condition of said road and sending in a further step 406 the sensed condition information to the coordination unit 120. If a processor-based implementation of the vehicle 100 is used, the steps of the method may be performed or initiated by one or more processors of the vehicle 100. In such a case the vehicle may further comprise a memory in which program code for implementing the below described functionalities is stored.

Fig. 6 shows a block diagram of a vehicle 600 according to an embodiment. The vehicle 600 comprises a processor 604 and a memory 606. Said memory 606 contains instructions executable by said processor 604, whereby said vehicle 600 is operative to receive, from a coordination unit 120, an indication to determine the condition of a road, sense, by a sensor 608, the condition of said road, and send the sensed condition information to the coordination unit 120. It is to be understood that the structure as illustrated in Fig. 6 is merely schematic and that the vehicle 600 may actually include further components which, for the sake of clarity, have not been illustrated, e.g., further interfaces. For example, multiple network interfaces could be provided which are configured to allow communication with different types of other nodes. Also, it is to be understood that the storage entity or memory 606 may include further types of program code modules, which have not been illustrated.

Moreover, it is to be understood that the above concepts may be implemented by using correspondingly designed software to be executed by one or more processors of an existing device, or by using dedicated device hardware. Also, the nodes as described herein may be implemented by a single device or by multiple devices, e.g., a device cloud or system of cooperating devices.

The present invention also concerns computer programs comprising portions of software codes or instructions in order to implement the method as described above when operated by at least one respective processing unit of a user device and a recipient device. A carrier may comprise the computer program, wherein the carrier can be one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium. The computer-readable medium can be a CD-ROM, a DVD, a Blu-ray Disc, a permanent or rewritable memory within the user device or the recipient device or located externally. The respective computer program can also be transferred to the user device or recipient device for example via a cable or a wireless link as a sequence of signals.

Claims

1 . A method in a coordination unit (120; 500) for monitoring a road condition, comprising or initiating the steps of:

- determining (302) that the condition of a road should be determined;

- sending (304) an instruction to at least one vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) which is determined based on position information of said at least one vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600), instructing to sense the road condition;

- receiving (306), in response to the instruction, condition information of said road, determined by a sensor (608) of said at least one vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600).

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the position information of said at least one vehicle (100;

220; 230; 240; 600) is an area identification of an area (210) in which the road to be monitored is located.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the instruction is sent to at least a subset of vehicles (100;

220; 230; 240; 600) which are located in said area (210) or which are close to said area (210).

4. The method of claim 3, wherein said subset of vehicles (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) is determined based on the capability of the sensor (608) of said at least one vehicle (100;

220; 230; 240; 600) out of the subset of vehicles (100; 220; 230; 240; 600).

5. The method of any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the sensor (608) is at least one of a video sensor, a noise sensor, a gyroscope or a radar sensor.

6. The method of any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the instruction to the at least one vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) comprises an indication of a timeframe until which the condition information must be determined.

7. The method of any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein determining that the condition of a road should be determined is based on an indication of an incident from at least one vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600).

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the incident is a change between a stored road condition information and a current road condition information.

9. The method of any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein determining that the condition of a road should be determined is based on a schedule.

10. A method in a vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) for monitoring road condition, comprising or initiating the steps of:

- receiving (402), from a coordination unit (120; 500), an indication to determine the condition of a road;

- sensing (404), by a sensor (608), the condition of said road; and

- sending (406) the sensed condition information to the coordination unit (120; 500).

1 1 . The method of claim 10, wherein the vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) initiates indicating, to the coordination unit (120; 500), that the condition of the road has been changed.

12. The method of claims 10 or 1 1 , wherein the sensor (608) is at least one of a video sensor, a noise sensor, a gyroscope or a radar sensor.

13. The method of any one of claims 10 to 12, wherein the method further comprises the step of initiating sending, to the coordination unit (120; 500), capability information of the sensor.

14. A coordination unit (120; 500) for monitoring a road condition, adapted to perform or initiate:

- determining (302) that the condition of a road should be determined;

15. The coordination unit (120; 500) of claim 14, adapted to perform or initiate the method of any one of claims 2 to 9.

16. A vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) for monitoring road conditions, the vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) is adapted to perform or initiate the steps of:

- sensing (404), by a sensor (608), the condition of said road; and

17. The vehicle (100; 220; 230; 240; 600) of claim 16, adapted to perform the method of any one of claims 1 1 to 13.

18. Computer program, comprising instructions which, when executed on at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to carry out the method according to any one of claims 1 to 9 or claims 10 to 13.

19. A carrier containing the computer program of claim 18, wherein the carrier is one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium.

20. A tangible, non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, having stored thereon a computer program comprising instructions which, when executed on at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to carry out the method according to any one of claims 1 to 9 or any one of claims 10 to 13.