Patent ID: 11862904
Assignee: GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC
Field: Electrical machinery, apparatus, energy (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC B  H | IPC H

Claim 19:
20. An apparatus to monitor cable connections between a trailer and a vehicle, the apparatus comprising:
a processor that is disposed in a trailer cable monitor device and is programmed with a set of instructions to monitor connection statuses of a trailer cable and a breakaway cable;
the processor is configured to receive connection data generated by a set of multimodal sensors integrated with the vehicle about the statuses of the cable connections between the trailer and the vehicle;
the processor is configured to initiate a monitor function upon detection of a presence of the trailer connected to the vehicle by at least one sensor of the set of multimodal sensors integrated with the vehicle to implement an information fusion algorithm based on different weighting associated with a set of multiple probability detection inputs comprising probabilities of detection of optical signal data, probabilities of detection of radio signal data, and probabilities of detections of range signal data received by one or more sensors of the set of the multimodal sensors;
the processor is configured to fuse together using an information fusion algorithm one or more types of signal data from the set of multimodal sensors comprising the optical signal data, the radio signal data, and the range signal data to determine the statuses of the cable connections; and
the processor is configured to implement an action state machine that receives a set of inputs of vehicle operating attributes comprising vehicle speed and calibrated speed thresholds, and the statuses of the cable connections to generate one or more action alerts.