Patent Application
20170210329
Airbags can provide protection for front and rear passengers of a vehicle. A vehicle may be equipped with sensors that can detect when the vehicle is in a collision. A controller or controllers may be in communication with the sensors and with the airbags. Depending on the signals from the sensors—which can indicate, for example, the direction of the collision—the controller may instruct the airbags or a subset of the airbags to deploy. The deployed airbags help cushion and protect the passengers from the forces of the collision.
One class of vehicles on which airbags can be installed is autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are capable of navigating themselves without the intervention of a driver. Because of the reduced importance of the driver, autonomous vehicles may have different interior layouts than non-autonomous vehicles.
With reference to the Figures, wherein like numerals indicate like parts throughout the several views, a door assembly for a vehicle 30 includes a door 38, an inflator 46 mounted to the door 38, and a passive restraint 28. The passive restraint 28 has a first airbag chamber 42 and a second airbag chamber 44. The first airbag chamber 42 is in communication with the inflator 46 and is inflatable from an uninflated position to an inflated position. The second airbag chamber 44 is in communication with the inflator 46 and is inflatable from an uninflated position to an inflated position. The first airbag chamber 42 in the inflated position extends transverse to the second airbag chamber 44 in the inflated position.
The transverse airbag chambers 42 and 44 of the passive restraint 28 help increase protection for a passenger in both front and side collisions. The door mounting helps increase protection for a rear seat passenger regardless of the position or orientation of a front seat, or the position and orientation of the front seat may be taken into account. By contrast, an airbag mounted in the seatback of the front seat may require constant recalibration depending on adjustments in the seat position by the front-seat passenger. Furthermore, in an autonomous vehicle, for example, the front seat may be rotated to face rearward, rendering an airbag mounted in the seatback of the front seat ineffective. Moreover, the single inflator 46 reduces complexity by serving two airbag chambers that can be useful in different crash scenarios.
As shown in
Although
The rear door 38 is shown in greater detail in
As set forth above, the first airbag chamber 42 and the second airbag chamber 44 of the passive restraint 28 extend transverse to each other in the inflated position. For example, as shown in
The inflator 46, the first airbag chamber 42, and the second airbag chamber 44 are components of the airbag assembly 40. The first airbag chamber 42 and the second airbag chamber 44 are in communication with the inflator 46 to expand the first and second airbag chambers with an inflation medium, such as a gas. The inflator 46 may be, for example, a pyrotechnic inflator 46 that uses a chemical reaction to drive inflation medium to the chambers 42 and 44. The inflator 46 may be of any suitable type, for example, a cold-gas inflator. The airbag assembly may include other components, for example, a case, electronics, etc.
The airbag chambers 42 and 44 may be formed of any suitable material, for example, a woven polymer. For example, the airbag chambers 42 and 44 may be formed of woven nylon yarn, for example, nylon 6-6. Other suitable examples include polyether ether ketone (PEEK), polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), polyester, or any other suitable polymer. The woven polymer may include a coating, such as silicone, neoprene, urethane, and so on. For example, the coating may be polyorgano siloxane.
In one possible approach, shown in
Independent inflation via a single inflator 46 may be achieved by the airbag assembly 40 including a first valve 64 between the inflator 46 and the first airbag chamber 42 and moveable between closed and open positions, and a second valve 66 between the inflator 46 and the second airbag chamber 44 and moveable between closed and open positions, as shown in
Alternatively, independent inflation via a single inflator 46 may be achieved by using a single dual-chambered inflator having two chambers with a pyrotechnic charge in each chamber being independently activated by signals received from the impact sensing system 48.
A schematic of the impact sensing system 48 is shown in
The controller 74 may be a microprocessor-based controller. The sensor 72 is in communication with the controller 74 to communicate data to the controller 74. The controller 74 is programmed to output command signals to independently change the first and second airbag chambers 42 and 44 from the uninflated positions to the inflated positions based on a detected direction of vehicle impact, determined by the sensor 72. More specifically, the controller 74 is programmed to output control signals to independently move the first valve 64 and the second valve 66 from the closed position to the open position, or the controller 74 is programmed to output control signals to independently activate the pyrotechnic charges of one or both chambers of an inflator 46 that is dual-chambered.
The controller 74 and the sensor 72 may be connected to a communication bus 76, such as a controller area network (CAN) bus, of the vehicle 30. The controller 74 may use information from the communication bus 76 to control the inflator 46. The inflator 46 may be connected to the controller 74, as shown in
In general, the computing systems and/or devices described may employ any of a number of computer operating systems, including, but by no means limited to, versions and/or varieties of the Ford Sync® application, AppLink/Smart Device Link middleware, the Microsoft Automotive® operating system, the Microsoft Windows® operating system, the Unix operating system (e.g., the Solaris® operating system distributed by Oracle Corporation of Redwood Shores, Calif.), the AIX UNIX operating system distributed by International Business Machines of Armonk, N.Y., the Linux operating system, the Mac OSX and iOS operating systems distributed by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., the BlackBerry OS distributed by Blackberry, Ltd. of Waterloo, Canada, and the Android operating system developed by Google, Inc. and the Open Handset Alliance, or the QNX® CAR Platform for Infotainment offered by QNX Software Systems. Examples of computing devices include, without limitation, an on-board vehicle computer, a computer workstation, a server, a desktop, notebook, laptop, or handheld computer, or some other computing system and/or device.
Computing devices generally include computer-executable instructions, where the instructions may be executable by one or more computing devices such as those listed above. Computer-executable instructions may be compiled or interpreted from computer programs created using a variety of programming languages and/or technologies, including, without limitation, and either alone or in combination, Java™, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java Script, Perl, etc. Some of these applications may be compiled and executed on a virtual machine, such as the Java Virtual Machine, the Dalvik virtual machine, or the like. In general, a processor (e.g., a microprocessor) receives instructions, e.g., from a memory, a computer-readable medium, etc., and executes these instructions, thereby performing one or more processes, including one or more of the processes described herein. Such instructions and other data may be stored and transmitted using a variety of computer-readable media.
A computer-readable medium (also referred to as a processor-readable medium) includes any non-transitory (e.g., tangible) medium that participates in providing data (e.g., instructions) that may be read by a computer (e.g., by a processor of a computer). Such a medium may take many forms, including, but not limited to, non-volatile media and volatile media. Non-volatile media may include, for example, optical or magnetic disks and other persistent memory. Volatile media may include, for example, dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which typically constitutes a main memory. Such instructions may be transmitted by one or more transmission media, including coaxial cables, copper wire and fiber optics, including the wires that comprise a system bus coupled to a processor of a computer. Common forms of computer-readable media include, for example, a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, any other magnetic medium, a CD-ROM, DVD, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a PROM, an EPROM, a FLASH-EEPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, or any other medium from which a computer can read.
Databases, data repositories or other data stores described herein may include various kinds of mechanisms for storing, accessing, and retrieving various kinds of data, including a hierarchical database, a set of files in a file system, an application database in a proprietary format, a relational database management system (RDBMS), etc. Each such data store is generally included within a computing device employing a computer operating system such as one of those mentioned above, and are accessed via a network in any one or more of a variety of manners. A file system may be accessible from a computer operating system, and may include files stored in various formats. An RDBMS generally employs the Structured Query Language (SQL) in addition to a language for creating, storing, editing, and executing stored procedures, such as the PL/SQL language mentioned above.
In some examples, system elements may be implemented as computer-readable instructions (e.g., software) on one or more computing devices (e.g., servers, personal computers, etc.), stored on computer readable media associated therewith (e.g., disks, memories, etc.). A computer program product may comprise such instructions stored on computer readable media for carrying out the functions described herein.
With regard to the processes, systems, methods, heuristics, etc. described herein, it should be understood that, although the steps of such processes, etc. have been described as occurring according to a certain ordered sequence, such processes could be practiced with the described steps performed in an order other than the order described herein. It further should be understood that certain steps could be performed simultaneously, that other steps could be added, or that certain steps described herein could be omitted. In other words, the descriptions of processes herein are provided for the purpose of illustrating certain embodiments, and should in no way be construed so as to limit the claims.
Accordingly, it is to be understood that the above description is intended to be illustrative and not restrictive. Many embodiments and applications other than the examples provided would be apparent upon reading the above description. The scope should be determined, not with reference to the above description, but should instead be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled. It is anticipated and intended that future developments will occur in the technologies discussed herein, and that the disclosed systems and methods will be incorporated into such future embodiments. In sum, it should be understood that the application is capable of modification and variation.
All terms used in the claims are intended to be given their ordinary meanings as understood by those knowledgeable in the technologies described herein unless an explicit indication to the contrary is made herein. In particular, use of the singular articles such as “a,” “the,” “said,” etc. should be read to recite one or more of the indicated elements unless a claim recites an explicit limitation to the contrary.
The Abstract is provided to allow the reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technical disclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. In addition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, it can be seen that various features are grouped together in various embodiments for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed embodiments require more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matter lies in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thus the following claims are hereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separately claimed subject matter.
