Process for obtaining traffic data

US6061625A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Mannesmann AG · DE

Inventor

• Ulrich Fastenrath · Bonn, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 31, 1998
• Grant date: May 9, 2000
• Expiry date: Jul 31, 2018

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G08G1/0104
• WIPO field: Control
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A process for obtaining traffic situation data in a compressed form, while largely maintaining the reliability of the data, whereby a speed profile for a vehicle that moves in traffic and belongs to a sampling vehicle fleet ("floating car") is found and transmitted wirelessly to a traffic center from time to time. The has the following features: PA1 a) The current speed of the vehicle is found continually in the vehicle. PA1 b) In the vehicle, characterizing numbers that characterize discrete segments of the vehicle speed profile are found from the current speed values, which characterizing numbers are characteristic of the curve of the speed actually travelled in the given segment. PA1 c) The discrete segments of the speed profile are formed continuously during the vehicle trip, in that the end of a current segment, and thus the beginning of a new segment, is defined on the basis of the results of a comparison between the speed profile of the vehicle and the speed profile of at least one virtual reference vehicle. PA1 d) When a new segment begins, the characterizing numbers of the segment just finished are stored in the vehicle at least until being transmitted to the traffic cente…