Patent ID: 8370056
Filing Date: 2013-02-05
Classification: G08G

Abstract:
1. A collision warning apparatus comprising: one or more sensors to detect one or more objects; one or more output devices to output a warning to a driver; one or more persistent memory locations to store one or more sets of vehicle GPS coordinates associated with previously identified potential collision objects; a GPS device to determine present GPS coordinates of a vehicle; and a processor in communication with the sensors, the output devices, the GPS device and the persistent memory locations, wherein the processor is configured to: receive information from the one or more sensors and process the information to identify a detected object as a present potential collision object; compare present GPS coordinates of the vehicle with stored vehicle GPS coordinates saved in persistent memory, to determine whether or not the present GPS coordinates correspond to stored vehicle GPS coordinates associated with a previously identified potential collision object; and if the present GPS coordinates correspond to stored vehicle GPS coordinates associated with a previously identified potential collision object, the processor is configured to suppress a potential collision warning; wherein the processor is further configured to access a stored number-of-detections associated with a previously detected potential collision object, stored in the persistent memory and indicative of the number of times a particular potential collision object has been detected at the associated stored vehicle GPS coordinates, and wherein the processor is configured to suppress a potential collision warning if the number-of-detections of a potential collision object, whose associated stored vehicle GPS coordinates correspond to the present GPS coordinates, exceeds a threshold.