Patent Document ID: 20140244067
Application ID: 13777100
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of modeling a road characteristic over a region in which a vehicle is driven, comprising the steps of: operating the vehicle on roadways having a characteristic that varies over a plurality of predetermined ranges; generating a succession of characteristic values while operating the vehicle at a predetermined rate, wherein each characteristic value identifies a respective predetermined range then being encountered by the vehicle; and updating a Markov chain road-characteristic model in response to the succession of characteristic values, wherein the model represents respective elements of probability in a matrix of transition events from each predetermined range to a respective next-in-succession range; wherein each element of the matrix has a value π i,j representing a weighted frequency of transition events from a first respective characteristic value to a second respective characteristic value divided by a weighted frequency of transition events initiating from the first respective characteristic value, so that the matrix successively approximates the road characteristic of the region.