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JP-7855942-B2 - Vehicle management system

JP7855942B2JP 7855942 B2JP7855942 B2JP 7855942B2JP-7855942-B2

Inventors

  • 加藤 行成
  • 松谷 慎太郎
  • 宇野 慶一

Assignees

  • トヨタ自動車株式会社

Dates

Publication Date
20260511
Application Date
20220628

Claims (6)

  1. Autonomous vehicles used to provide transportation services, The vehicle is equipped with a server capable of communicating with it, The aforementioned server, If a user of the aforementioned transportation service is on board, the vehicle will be required to adhere to predetermined driving restrictions during the automated driving process. If the aforementioned user is not currently on board, request the lifting of the aforementioned driving restriction. A vehicle management system that calculates the accumulated load acting on the vehicle and uses the calculated accumulated load to set the content of the lifting of the driving restriction requested when the user is not on board.
  2. The vehicle management system according to claim 1, wherein the server sets the content for releasing the driving restriction so that the driving restriction is maintained more when the amount of stored data is high than when the amount of stored data is low.
  3. The vehicle management system according to claim 2, wherein the server does not request the lifting of the driving restriction when the vehicle reaches a predetermined state where the amount of stored data is high, even if the user is not currently in the vehicle.
  4. The vehicle management system according to claim 1, wherein the server requests the lifting of the driving restriction on a vehicle traveling along a predetermined route, including a location where the vehicle is being serviced, when the user is not on board.
  5. The vehicle management system according to claim 1, wherein the aforementioned driving restrictions include at least one of the following: a restriction on the vehicle's driving force, a restriction on the vehicle's braking force, and a restriction on the vehicle's steering force.
  6. The vehicle management system according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the server calculates the accumulated amount using at least one of the following: the vehicle's mileage, the vehicle's operating time, the number of passengers in the vehicle, the mileage until the next maintenance is performed, and the operating time until the next maintenance is performed.

Description

This disclosure relates to a vehicle management system. When autonomous vehicles are used to provide transportation services, it becomes possible to shorten the vehicle's travel time by changing the acceleration and deceleration control depending on whether or not there are passengers on board. For example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 2019-151177 (Patent Document 1) discloses a technology for rapidly accelerating and decelerating a vehicle when there are no occupants on board, thereby shortening travel time. Japanese Patent Publication No. 2019-151177 This diagram provides a schematic overview of the overall configuration of the vehicle management system.This diagram shows a more detailed example of the ADK and VP configuration.This flowchart shows an example of the processes performed on the management server.This diagram illustrates the normal driving route and the deadheading route. The embodiments of this disclosure will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. Parts identical or corresponding to those shown in the drawings are denoted by the same reference numerals, and their descriptions will not be repeated. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram showing the overall configuration of the vehicle management system 100. The vehicle management system 100 manages multiple vehicles. While in reality, a large number of vehicles can be managed by the vehicle management system 100, for the sake of explanation, the following description will use the case where specific vehicles 1 and 4 are managed by the vehicle management system 100 as an example. The vehicle management system 100 includes vehicles 1 and 4 and a management server 7. Vehicle 1 includes an Autonomous Driving Kit (ADK) 2 and a Vehicle Platform (VP) 3. Similarly, vehicle 4 includes an ADK 5 and a VP 6. The users of vehicles 1 and 4 may be, for example, businesses that provide autonomous driving transportation services using vehicles 1 and 4 (such as bus operators, taxi operators, rental car operators, car-sharing operators, or ride-sharing service operators). In this embodiment, we assume that the users of vehicles 1 and 4 are, for example, businesses that own multiple vehicles and provide personnel transportation services. Personnel transportation services include, for example, a service that involves driving vehicles along multiple routes (such as routes passing through urban areas and routes passing through mountainous areas), moving to predetermined pick-up and drop-off points along the routes at set times, picking up and dropping off passengers at these points, and collecting usage fees. In this embodiment, for the sake of explanation, the multiple routes include a return route that includes the location of a maintenance factory and a normal route that circulates through multiple predetermined pick-up and drop-off points without passing through the maintenance factory. The following describes an example configuration for autonomous driving, using Vehicle 1 as an example. The ADK2 installed in Vehicle 1 is configured to be attachable to and detachable from the VP3 of Vehicle 1. The ADK2 is installed, for example, in a predetermined location such as the rooftop of the VP3. ADK2 is configured to enable automated driving of vehicle 1. Specifically, ADK2 creates a driving plan for vehicle 1. ADK2 outputs various control requests to VP3 according to the API (Application Program Interface) defined for each control request, in order to drive vehicle 1 according to the driving plan. ADK2 also receives various signals indicating the vehicle status (status of VP3) from VP3 according to the API defined for each signal. ADK2 then reflects the vehicle status in the driving plan. Note that ADK2 may, for example, create the driving plan using driving plan information from the management server 7. VP3 performs driving control in automatic driving mode according to control requests from ADK2. If ADK2 is removed from VP3, VP3 is configured to perform driving control in manual mode (driving control according to driver operation). VP3 transmits various information (such as operation information described later) to the management server 7 within the vehicle management system 100. The management server 7 may be the service provider's own server, a shared server shared by multiple service providers including the service provider in question, or a cloud server provided by a cloud server management company. The management server 7 is a server operated by a business operator that manages the maintenance of multiple vehicles, including vehicle 1. This business operator could be, for example, the manufacturer of VP3 or the manufacturer of ADK2. Furthermore, the management server 7 may be configured to include a server operated by the VP3 manufacturer and a server operating ADK2. In the following description, the case where the management server 7 is configured as a single server will be described as an example. The management server 7 is configured to r