Traffic profiling and road conditions-based trip time computing system with localized and cooperative assessment
This invention localizes traffic condition detection and classification to a vehicle. Vehicles work cooperatively to fuse their traffic condition assessments so as to produce larger geographical coverage and more reliable evidence of the conditions. The system can be executed on an onboard device which includes at least one of the following: GPS capabilities, connection connected to the vehicle to measure vehicle speed, or communication with a cell phone. In the example of the cell phone, speed can be computed from phone GPS, a GPRS/CDMA, or both. Otherwise, vehicle speed can be determined obtained from in-vehicle on-board diagnostic system (e.g. using the OBD-II protocol) or based on GPS and accelerometer readings.
1. A method for measuring traffic including:
a) determining a current location of a vehicle from a gps receiver;
b) accessing a database to determine a current speed limit based upon the current location of the vehicle;
c) determining a current speed of the vehicle from the gps receiver or from a vehicle on-board diagnostic system;
d) comparing the current speed of the vehicle to the current speed limit;
e) receiving a natural language voice description of traffic from a user in the vehicle;
f) parsing the natural language voice description of traffic with a processor to estimate a traffic condition at the current location of the vehicle; and
g) determining a traffic condition including a traffic congestion event based upon said steps d) and f);
wherein said steps a-e) are performed on the vehicle.
2. The method of claim 1 further including reporting the traffic condition to a remote server.
3. The method of claim 2 further including merging the traffic condition with reported traffic conditions from other vehicles.
4. The method of claim 2 wherein the processor requests traffic information from the remote server for road segments other than a current road segment based upon a current direction of travel of the vehicle and based upon the current location of the vehicle.
5. The method of claim 1 further including abstracting numerical traffic condition information to generate speech to report the traffic condition to a user in the vehicle.
6. The method of claim 5 wherein the step of abstracting the traffic information includes producing linguistic traffic descriptors from numerical speed range measurements.
7. The method of claim 1 further including the step of associating the traffic congestion event with the current location, based upon said step g) and said step a).
8. The method of claim 7 further including receiving a plurality of spoken descriptions from a plurality of different users, parsing the plurality of spoken descriptions to determine a plurality of traffic conditions and merging the plurality of traffic conditions.
9. The method of claim 7 further including receiving a request for traffic condition information, and performing an abstraction of the traffic condition associated with the current location and then communicating the abstracted traffic condition via speech.
10. The method of claim 9 wherein the processor produces the abstraction of the traffic condition by producing linguistic traffic descriptors from numerical speed range measurements.