In a driver assistance method for a vehicle, to identify moving objects on the side and to avoid unnecessary collision warnings, the method includes: a) detecting an object with the aid of a first sensor; b) detecting the object with the aid of a second sensor; c) checking whether the object has left the detection area of the second sensor; and d1) discarding the distance data measured by the first sensor and the second sensor if the object has left the detection area of the second sensor; or d2) determining the position of the object from measured distance data if the object has not left the detection area of the second sensor.

A distance detection apparatus includes a wave transmitter configured to transmit a transmission wave, a wave receiver configured to receive the transmission wave which is reflected by an object, a storage portion configured to store a transmission signal, a correlation processing portion configured to obtain a correlation value between the transmission signal and a reception signal corresponding to a reception wave, and a detection portion configured to detect a distance to the obstacle in a case where the correlation value indicates that the transmission signal and the reception signal are similar to each other at a level which is equal to or greater than a predetermined level.

In one form, an acoustic signal is generated for an acoustic transducer, where the acoustic transducer transmits the acoustic signal to determine a first position of an obstacle. In response to the acoustic signal encountering the obstacle within a predetermined distance, an echo, or pulse, is detected at the acoustic transducer. At a first time, a magnitude is detected in response to a rising edge of the pulse intersecting a determined threshold. A second magnitude is detected in response to the detection of a first peak of the pulse. A time of flight of the acoustic signal, within the predetermined distance, is determined when a compensation time is extracted from a correction calculation algorithm in response to detecting the first magnitude and the second magnitude. The compensation time is subtracted from the first time, and the difference of the compensation time and the first time is the time of flight.

The present disclosure provides an ultrasonic radar array, an obstacle detection method and system. The method comprises: obtaining obstacle information collected by ultrasonic radars in an ultrasonic radar array in an obstacle scenario; judging false detection and missed detection for the obstacle information collected by ultrasonic radars according a preset rule; processing the obstacle information collected by the ultrasonic radars according to the judgement result; determining a position of the obstacle according to the processed obstacle information collected by the ultrasonic radars. According to the present disclosure, it is possible to effectively judge false detection and missed detection happening to the ultrasonic radars in the ultrasonic radar array, precisely determine the position of the obstacle and improve the driving safety of the unmanned vehicle.

An ultrasonic sensor includes a first electrode, a second electrode, and a third electrode. The first electrode is provided an ultrasonic microphone that includes a vibration element that provides a function for converting between mechanical vibrations and electrical signals. The second electrode is externally from the ultrasonic microphone such that an electrical characteristic between the second electrode and the first electrode changes based on an adhesion state of substances adhering to the ultrasonic microphone. The third electrode is provided so as to suppress changes in the electrical characteristic between the first electrode and the second electrode caused by factors other than the adhesion of substances adhering to the ultrasonic microphone.

A method of detecting a signal with a sensor. The method includes obtaining a plurality of signals with a sensor. A correlation is performed to determine if any of the plurality of signals correlate to at least one predefined signal. The at least one predefined signal corresponds to identifying the occurrence of a specific event.

In various examples, a multi-sensor fusion machine learning model—such as a deep neural network (DNN)—may be deployed to fuse data from a plurality of individual machine learning models. As such, the multi-sensor fusion network may use outputs from a plurality of machine learning models as input to generate a fused output that represents data from fields of view or sensory fields of each of the sensors supplying the machine learning models, while accounting for learned associations between boundary or overlap regions of the various fields of view of the source sensors. In this way, the fused output may be less likely to include duplicate, inaccurate, or noisy data with respect to objects or features in the environment, as the fusion network may be trained to account for multiple instances of a same object appearing in different input representations.

A drive support device includes: an acquisition processing unit that acquires (i) a distance to an object detected based on a result of transmission of a transmission wave and reception of a reception wave that is the transmission wave having returned upon reflection by the object and (ii) a reception level of the reception wave used to detect the distance; and a detection processing unit that detects information about a height of the object, based on a relationship between the distance and the reception level that are acquired by the acquisition processing unit.

A method for monitoring the surroundings of a vehicle, the surroundings behind the vehicle being detected with the aid of ultrasonic sensors and with the aid of at least one imaging sensor, a warning signal being output when an object that has a distance to the vehicle smaller than a predefined minimum distance is detected with the aid of ultrasonic sensors, a trailer of the vehicle being recognized with the aid of the imaging sensor, and the warning signal not being output when the object is the trailer recognized by the imaging sensor.

Piezoelectric sensor controllers may facilitate detection and identification of various potential fault states with novel parameter measurements. In an illustrative embodiment of a piezoelectric-based sensor having a shorted-reverberation based resonant frequency measurement, the sensor includes a piezoelectric transducer that provides residual reverberation after being driven. The sensor further includes a controller that provides a low impedance path for the piezoelectric transducer during the residual reverberation and that measures current through the low impedance path to determine a resonant frequency of the piezoelectric transducer. In an illustrative embodiment of a sensing method having a shorted-reverberation based resonant frequency measurement, the method includes: driving a piezoelectric transducer that provides residual reverberation after being driven; providing a low impedance path for the piezoelectric transducer during the residual reverberation; and measuring current through the low impedance path to determine a resonant frequency of the piezoelectric transducer.