Method for accelerometer-assisted navigation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11927447-B2
Application number	US-202117360769-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 28, 2021
Priority date	Aug 20, 2015
Publication date	Mar 12, 2024
Grant date	Mar 12, 2024

Abstract

A method for primarily sensor-based navigation includes: in a first time period, collecting geophysical position data using a GPS receiver of a navigation device; in the first time period, collecting a first set of accelerometer data using an accelerometer of the navigation device; analyzing the first set of accelerometer data to produce a first set of vertical vehicular motion data; generating a mapping association between the first set of vertical vehicular motion data and the geophysical position data; in a second time period after the first time period, collecting a second set of accelerometer data using the accelerometer; analyzing the second set of accelerometer data to produce a second set of vertical vehicular motion data; and calculating an estimated location of the vehicle by analyzing the second set of vertical vehicular motion data in light of the mapping association.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method for estimating a location of a vehicle, the method comprising:
for a first trip of the vehicle along a first route:
receiving a first sensor dataset from a first sensor of a mobile user device;
receiving a second sensor dataset from a second sensor of the mobile user device;
determining a first set of vertical vehicular data based on the second sensor dataset, wherein determining the first set of vertical vehicular data comprises scaling the second sensor dataset based on a vehicular speed;
generating a mapping between the first sensor dataset and the first set of vertical vehicular data;

for a second trip of the vehicle along a second route;
collecting a third sensor dataset from the first sensor of the mobile user device;
collecting a fourth sensor dataset from the second sensor of the mobile user device;
detecting that the second route is the same as the first route;
in response to detecting that the second route is the same as the first route, adjusting a sampling rate of the first sensor; and
determining an estimated location of the vehicle based on the fourth sensor dataset and the mapping.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein adjusting the sampling rate of the first sensor comprises decreasing a sampling rate of the first sensor.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein adjusting the sampling rate of the first sensor further comprises switching off the first sensor.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first sensor is a location sensor.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein each of the first and third sensor datasets comprises a set of GPS locations.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein the second sensor is at least one of an accelerometer and a barometer.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising automatically determining an identity of a driver of the vehicle of the second trip, wherein detecting that the second route is the same as the first route is performed at least in part based on the identity of the driver.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining a second set of vertical vehicular data based on the fourth sensor dataset, wherein the estimated location of the vehicle is further determined based on the second set of vertical vehicular data.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein detecting that the second route is the same as the first route is performed based on at least one of the third and fourth sensor datasets.

10. A method for estimating a location of a vehicle, the method comprising:
receiving a mapping between a first set of vertical vehicular data and a set of locations;
collecting a supplementary sensor dataset from a supplementary sensor of the user device;
determining a second set of vertical vehicular data based on the supplementary sensor dataset, wherein determining the second set of vertical vehicular data comprises scaling the supplementary sensor dataset based on a vehicular speed;
detecting that the second set of vertical vehicular data is a subset of the first set of vertical vehicular data;
in response to detecting that the second set of vertical vehicular data is a subset of the first set of vertical vehicular data, adjusting a sampling rate of a location sensor of the user device; and
determining an estimated location of the vehicle based on the second set of vertical vehicular data and the mapping.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the user device is a mobile user device.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the mobile user device is a smartphone.

13. The method of claim 10 , wherein the estimated location is further determined based on a location dataset from the location sensor of the user device, the location dataset collected at the adjusted sampling rate.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the location dataset comprises a set of GPS locations.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein the supplementary sensor is at least one of an accelerometer and a barometer.

16. The method of claim 10 , wherein adjusting the sampling rate of the location sensor of the user device comprises decreasing a sampling rate of the location sensor of the user device.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein adjusting the sampling rate of the location sensor of the user device further comprises switching off the location sensor of the user device.

18. The method of claim 10 , further comprising automatically determining an identity of a driver of the vehicle, wherein detecting that the second set of vertical vehicular data is a subset of the first set of vertical vehicular data is performed at least in part based on the identity of the driver.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the driver is associated with a set of commonly driven trips.

20. The method of claim 19 , wherein the second set of vertical vehicular data is associated with one of the set of commonly driven trips.

Assignees

• Zendrive Inc

Inventors

• Choudhury Romit Roy
• Pal Jayanta
• Risbood Pankaj
• Matus Jonathan

Classifications

• G01C21/165 Primary

  combined with non-inertial navigation instruments · CPC title

• G01C21/30

  Map- or contour-matching · CPC title