Patent ID: 8583340

Claim:
A system for assessing road curvature in response to requests from one or more users, said system comprising: an interface operative to communicate with the one or more users, wherein the interface receives the requests from the one or more users; a path generator operative to generate a first path between a first point and a second point in response to a path request, wherein the first path includes a plurality of waypoints; a road curvature assessor operative to generate an optimal speed profile for a second path in response to an assessment request, wherein the optimal speed profile for the second path satisfies both acceleration constraints and speed constraints, wherein generating the optimal speed profile includes: sweeping through the plurality of waypoints in a first direction to determine an along track acceleration profile, wherein the along track acceleration profile satisfies a negative acceleration constraint; and, sweeping through the plurality of waypoints in a second direction to update the along track acceleration profile wherein the updated along track acceleration profile satisfies both a negative acceleration constraint and a positive acceleration constraint; and, a controller operative to respond to each of the requests via the interface, wherein said controller selectively relays the requests to the path generator and/or the road curvature assessor, wherein said controller selectively relays paths from the path generator to the road curvature assessor; wherein the controller is configured to provide one or more of: notify a user in response to the comfort level being less than a predetermined level; provide an indication of he comfort to the user in response to receiving the request; generate a new path including a comfort level greater than a predetermined level in response to the comfort level of the path being less than the predetermined level; and impose speed limits on a driver of a vehicle based on the optimal speed profile.