Patent ID: 7647178

Claim:
A method for autonomous collision avoidance in multiple obstacle scenarios comprising the steps of: operating at least one sensor to detect a plurality of obstacles in front of a vehicle hosting the system; operating a forward collision avoidance system to estimate a position, a velocity and an acceleration of each of the obstacles; evaluating for each respective one of the obstacles separately a set of collision maneuvers which the vehicle is capable of performing that will lead to a collision with the respective obstacle; forming a union of the sets of collision maneuvers which will lead to collision with any one of the obstacles; establishing a set of avoidance maneuvers which the vehicle is capable of performing through which collision with any of the obstacles may be avoided; deciding how to avoid or mitigate collision with any one of the obstacles based at least in part on the set of avoidance maneuvers; and autonomously executing a collision avoidance maneuver based on the decision.