Systems and methods for generating improved environmental displays for vehicles

• Main Authors: Bode, Justin Michael, Cross, Jack Philip, Howard, David McMartin, Hansen, Jr., Joseph H, Sweet, Timothy L, Valigura, Igor, Jourdan, Damien Bruno, Gleason, Joshua D, Pickens, Rodney Lee, Brandstetter, III, William Edward
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 10.09.2019
• Subjects: AIRCRAFT; ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES; ARRANGEMENTS OR MOUNTING OF POWER PLANTS OR PROPULSIONTRANSMISSIONS IN AIRCRAFT; AVIATION; CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COSMONAUTICS; COUNTING; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; EQUIPMENT FOR FITTING IN OR TO AIRCRAFT; FLYING SUITS; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION ORRERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; MEASURING; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; NAVIGATION; PARACHUTES; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; SIGNALLING; SURVEYING; TESTING; TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS; TRANSPORTING

An imaging system for a moving vehicle aggregates pre-existing data with sensor data to provide an image of the surrounding environment in real-time. The pre-existing data are combined with data from one or more 3-D sensors, and 2-D information from a camera, to create a scene model that is rendered for display. The system accepts data from a 3-D sensor, transforms the data into a 3-D data structure, fuses the pre-existing scene data with the 3-D data structure and 2-D image data from a 2-D sensor to create a combined scene model, and renders the combined scene model for display. The system may also weight aspects of data from first and second sensors to select at least one aspect from the first sensor and another aspect from the second sensor; wherein fusing the pre-existing scene data with the sensor data uses the selected aspect from the first sensor and the selected aspect from the second sensor.