A method is disclosed for improving the permissiveness of a vehicle designed to operate within an operational design domain (“ODD”) where the vehicle has an autonomous vehicle control system capable of collecting sensor data. The method, which can be incorporated into a system or into instructions placed on storage media, includes partitioning the ODD into subsets (“micro-ODDs”) that relate to different operational situations and creating safety envelopes for those subsets. The safety envelopes are used to keep the vehicle operating safely and can be optimized to improve permissiveness of the vehicular operation.

The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and method for controlling a parking operation of a vehicle, and more specifically, to a specific method and apparatus for controlling a parking operation of a vehicle using a radar sensor and an ultrasonic sensor of the vehicle to reduce parking time.

The technology relates to autonomous vehicles having articulating sections such as the trailer of a tractor-trailer. Aspects include approaches for tracking the pose of the trailer, including its orientation relative to the tractor unit. Sensor data is analyzed from one or more onboard sensors to identify and track the pose. The pose information is usable by on-board perception and/or planning systems when driving the vehicle in an autonomous mode. By way of example, on-board sensors such as Lidar sensors are used to detect the real-time pose of the trailer based on Lidar point cloud data. The orientation of the trailer is estimated based on the point cloud data, and the pose is determined according to the orientation and other information about the trailer. Aspects also include determining which side of the trailer the sensor data is coming from. A camera may also detect trailer marking information to supplement the analysis.

In some implementations, a method of verifying operation of a sensor is provided. The method includes causing a sensor to obtain sensor data at a first time, wherein the sensor obtains the sensor data by emitting waves towards a detector. The method also includes determining that the detector has detected the waves at a second time. The method further includes receiving the sensor data from the sensor at a third time. The method further includes verifying operation of the sensor based on at least one of the first time, the second time, or the third time.

A method for supporting energy-efficient deceleration of a vehicle includes determining a reference deceleration depending on a current speed or a speed profile of the vehicle, determining a starting time point and a starting speed of a deceleration of the vehicle, and determining a real energy consumption and a real distance between the starting time point and a current time point and/or ending time point of the deceleration. The method also includes calculating a reference time and a reference distance for a deceleration with the determined reference deceleration between the determined starting speed and the current speed and/or the speed at the ending time point of the vehicle, calculating an energy consumption for a differential distance from the determined real distance and the calculated reference distance, and calculating a real total energy consumption as the sum of the determined real energy consumption of the deceleration and the calculated energy consumption for the differential distance. Further, the method includes calculating a reference energy consumption for the reference deceleration from the starting speed to the current and/or ending speed depending on a predefined deceleration type of the reference deceleration and/or depending on the determined real energy consumption of the deceleration, and then providing an energy-saving potential on the basis of a difference between the real total energy consumption and the calculated reference energy consumption.

A vehicle control system includes an object placement portion in which an object can be placed, an automated driving controller configured to execute automated driving for automatically controlling at least one of acceleration or deceleration and steering of a vehicle, and an object placement controller configured to change the object placement portion from a first mode to a second mode in which the object placement portion is more easily used by an occupant of the vehicle than in the first mode in accordance with a control state of automated driving executed by the automated driving controller.

Systems and methods for dynamic predictive control of autonomous vehicles are disclosed. In one aspect, an in-vehicle control system for a semi-truck includes one or more control mechanisms configured to control movement of the semi-truck and a processor. The system further includes computer-readable memory in communication with the processor and having stored thereon computer-executable instructions to cause the processor to receive a desired trajectory and a vehicle status of the semi-truck, determine a dynamic model of the semi-truck based on the desired trajectory and the vehicle status, determine at least one quadratic program (QP) problem based on the dynamic model, generate at least one control command for controlling the semi-truck by solving the at least one QP problem, and provide the at least one control command to the one or more control mechanisms.

A driving behavior evaluation device includes a memory and a processor. In a case in which a speed of a target vehicle exceeds a regulation speed and an amount of deviation of the speed of the target vehicle with respect to an average speed of vehicles around the target vehicle is equal to or greater than a threshold value, the processor is configured to set an evaluation of driving behavior of the target vehicle to a lower value than in a case in which the speed of the target vehicle exceeds the regulation speed and the amount of deviation is less than the threshold value.

Described herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable media for implementing automated vehicle safety response measures to ensure continued safe automated vehicle operation for a limited period of time after a vehicle component or vehicle system that supports an automated vehicle driving function fails. When a critical vehicle component/system such as a vehicle computing platform fails, the vehicle is likely no longer capable of performing calculations required to safely operate and navigate the vehicle in an autonomous manner, or at a minimum, is no longer able to ensure the accuracy of such calculations. In such a scenario, the automated vehicle safety response measures disclosed herein can ensure—despite failure of the vehicle component/system—continued safe automated operation of the vehicle for a limited period of time in order to bring the vehicle to a safe stop.

A method for monitoring a motor vehicle including an automated driving function, including differing modes of operation for bringing the motor vehicle to a standstill, at least one energy store, in particular a battery, supplying at least one consumer which is able to bring the vehicle to a standstill, a respective load profile being assigned to the respective mode of operation, which usually occurs in this mode of operation upon activation of the consumer, at least one characteristic variable of the energy store being predicted as a function of at least one of the load profiles, and the mode of operation associated with the load profile and/or the automated driving function being unblocked, blocked, left or influenced as a function of the predicted characteristic variable of the energy store.