Method of collision prevention for automatic vehicles, especially in driverless transport systems

Abstract

Abstract In a method of collision prevention for automatic vehicles, especially in driverless transport systems in which an ultrasonic pulse is emitted and the time until the arrival of the echo is evaluated for a distance measurement, ultrasonic pulses are emitted towards the travelling path of the vehicle in a downwards inclined manner. The lower region of the sound lobe is blocked off with respect to the horizontal at a shadowing angle of at least 30 DEG and thus flattened off. Ultrasonic frequencies of below 100 kHz, preferably from 20 to 40 kHz, can be used. A distance to the floor can be defined which, with the shortest distance of an object in the direction of movement in front of the vehicle at which an obstacle with a height of 1 cm is still detected, designates the distance between this obstacle and the ultrasonic sensor. All the objects which are detected by the sound lobe once or more than once at a distance shorter than the distance to the floor are identified for the purpose of controlling the vehicle speed or of controlling emergency stops. <IMAGE>

Inventors

• 👤 Manfred Schoeller

Bibliographic Details