Patent ID: 9527528
Filing Date: 2016-12-27
CPC Classification: B60W,B62D

Claim Text:
1. A method of preventing damage to a vehicle during a forward moving curve comprising the steps of: providing a forward moving vehicle having a vehicle length, a vehicle width; a vehicle velocity, a current vehicle yaw rate, a current vehicle lateral acceleration and two or more wheels wherein at least one of the two or more wheels pivot to one or more wheel angles to cause the vehicle to move or turn around a curve along a current forward path of travel; providing a vehicle steering control system on the vehicle for controlling the pivot of the two or more wheels to said one or more wheel angles; providing one or more velocity sensors for communicating velocity signals indicative of the speed of the vehicle; providing an object detection system on the vehicle capable of sending object detection signals; providing a driver feedback device on the vehicle; providing an electronic control unit (ECU) in the vehicle for receiving inputs from the vehicle steering control system, vehicle velocity sensors, the object detection system and sending signals to the driver feedback device; generating steering signals from the vehicle steering control system to the ECU, wherein the steering signals control the one or more wheel angles; inputting current vehicle yaw rate and current vehicle lateral acceleration to the ECU; generating the object detection signals from the objected detection system to the ECU; generating the velocity signals from the one or more velocity sensors to the ECU; inputting the vehicle length and vehicle width data to the ECU, wherein the vehicle length data and the vehicle width data is provided by the driver or by the exterior object detection system that is capable of determining the length of the vehicle; calculating the current forward path of travel of the vehicle based on the vehicle length, the vehicle width, the vehicle velocity, the current vehicle yaw rate, the current vehicle lateral acceleration and the steering signals indicative of the one or more wheel angles; determining, using the ECU whether the current forward path of travel is a safe path or unsafe path by evaluating the current forward path of travel, object detection signals and vehicle length, wherein an unsafe path is determined when the path of travel will cause the vehicle to collide with the one or more objects detected by the object detection system and a safe path of travel is determined when the vehicle will not collide with one or more objects detected by the object detection system; sending a warning signal to the driver feedback device when an unsafe path of travel has been determined by the ECU, wherein the driver feedback device will activate in order to convey that an unsafe path has been determined by the ECU; using the ECU to calculate a suggested safe path; and conveying the suggested safe path to the driver using a visual display screen with an unsafe path graphic showing the unsafe path and a suggested safe path graphic showing the safe path on the visual display screen to allow for the driver to determine how much of an adjustment should be made to the one or more wheel angles of the two or more wheels in order to adjust the current forward path travel to the suggested safe path.