Patent ID: 9594610
Date: 2017-03-14
CPC Classifications: B60K,G06F

Claim:
1. A method in a merging unit of a system for processing multimodal input signals, the method comprising: receiving instruction messages each indicating an instruction to be executed by an application to be coupled to the merging unit; generating a candidate object for the instruction message for at least two of the instruction messages, the candidate object indicating the instruction and comprising a validity time specification of the candidate object; merging two of the candidate objects in response to the validity time specifications of these candidate objects indicate overlapping validity times; and forwarding an instruction to the application, which instruction is indicated by a candidate object which results from the merging operation, wherein the candidate objects result from the merging operation unchanged in response to the instructions indicated by the respective candidate objects not competing; receiving a first instruction message from a first sensor data evaluation device, the first instruction message indicating a first instruction which can be executed by an application which can be coupled to the merging unit; generating a first candidate object for the first instruction message, the first candidate object indicating the first instruction and comprising a validity time specification of the first candidate object and a weighting of the first candidate object; receiving a second instruction message from a second sensor data evaluation device, the second instruction message indicating a second instruction to be executed by an application which can be coupled to the merging unit; generating a second candidate object for the second instruction message, the second candidate object indicating the second instruction and comprising a validity time specification of the second candidate object and a weighting of the second candidate object; and merging the first candidate object with the second candidate object based on the weighting of the first candidate object and the weighting of the second candidate object in response to the validity time specification of the first candidate object indicates a first validity time which overlaps a second validity time indicated by the validity time specification of the second candidate object and in response to the first instruction competes with the second instruction.