The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 28, 2000
Filed:
Jul. 30, 1998
Michael K Walden, Noblesville, IN (US);
Sheri Lynn Patterson, Greentown, IN (US);
Joseph Thomas Dalum, Noblesville, IN (US);
Gretchen Elizabeth Bubolz, Farmington Hills, MI (US);
Kristi Kay Reprogle, Greentown, IN (US);
Delco Electronics Corp., Kokomo, IN (US);
Abstract
An improved deployment method for a vehicular supplemental restraint system, wherein the existence of a rough road condition is indicated if a measure of crash severity obtained from an acceleration sensor exceeds a rough road threshold and the crash event reset criteria are subsequently met with no intervening deployment of the restraint device. The rough road indication is maintained for a timed period, and normal deployment of the restraint device is inhibited during the timed period unless the acceleration signal exceeds a minimum threshold and the measure of crash severity exceeds an additional deployment threshold which is initially higher than the normal deployment threshold. When the rough road condition is detected, a counter is initialized to a predefined value, and then periodically indexed so long as no potential crash event is in progress. If the counter is indexed to another predefined value prior to another rough road detection, the rough road condition is reset. A severe rough road will produce multiple initializations of the counter, resulting in a prolonged rough road indication, whereas a single rough road impact will result in a much shorter rough road indication. Raising the crash severity threshold in the presence of a rough road condition increases immunity to rough road events and allows the use of relatively aggressive reset criteria, while retaining the ability to properly deploy the restraints in a concatenated crash event.