TRAILER BACKING UP DEVICE AND TABLE BASED METHOD

摘要

The present invention is a guidance computing system used by the driver of a vehicle towing a trailer while backing-up that rapidly calculates and predicts the direction in which the tow vehicle and trailer will become generally in-line for a given position of the steering wheel, thereby enabling the use of slower, lower cost microcomputers. This is accomplished by using a predetermined table, based on a baseline trailer of known length, having a measure of turning as one of its axes; such an axis is necessary to facilitate ratiometric scaling to convert table values to correspond to any length trailer. In a specially equipped vehicle incorporating servomechanisms to enable the vehicle to steer itself, the driver indicates the direction desired for the trailer to travel. The present invention also predicts left and right path limits for controlling the direction of the trailer when maneuvering complex paths.

主权项

1. A method of controlling the direction of a towed trailer that has a length that can be measured, that is connected to a tow vehicle by a jointed connection, and that is being pushed with the jointed connection by the tow vehicle, and where the tow vehicle has a front set of wheels and a rear set of wheels with the two sets of wheels being separated by a distance and an angle of at least one of the two sets of wheels is changeable to effect steering, comprising the steps of:
I.) determining a jointed connection angle, the jointed connection angle being formed at the intersection of a centerline of the tow vehicle and a centerline of the trailer, II.) determining a value representative of the steering of the tow vehicle, this steering value being related to the angle of the set of wheels that is changeable to effect steering, III.) using an electronic computing device for determining a turning value whereby inputs to the turning value determination comprise (i) the determined steering value for the tow vehicle, (ii) the separation distance of the two sets of wheels of the tow vehicle, and (iii) the length of the towed trailer, and IV.) using an electronic computing device for determining a potential change in direction of either the tow vehicle or the towed trailer by using the turning value to look up an angular value indicating where the trailer and the tow vehicle will become generally in-line from a fixed table, either by looking up on an axis where the turning value would be and locating a corresponding potential change in direction value in the table, or by looking up within the table where the turning value would be and locating a corresponding potential change in direction value on an axis.