SmartDrive Systems has been notified by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that a patent will be issued for its application for advanced driving maneuver detection and integration with on board active safety systems, adding to SmartDrive’s intellectual property portfolio of 106 issued patents and pending patent applications.

The patent that will issue to SmartDrive has been allowed for the invention of triggering event video when an active safety system is engaged or the driver executes a high-risk maneuver. These triggers were designed to target specific areas of driving risk that are not identifiable by traditional accelerometer-based event-triggering. Leveraging analysis of SmartDrive’s database of 80 million analyzed driving events, this level of advanced triggering from active systems is more accurate at identifying collision risk and is only possible through SmartDrive’s open-platform technology approach that facilitates real-time data integration with other on-board safety systems.

“With this award, SmartDrive continues to demonstrate our leadership position in delivering a video based safety platform that lowers driving risk and our commitment to ongoing technology innovation,” said Steve Mitgang, chief executive officer of SmartDrive. “As the only video safety provider that offers real-time triggering from active safety systems and advanced maneuver-based triggering, we are able to deliver the fastest insight to risk. This award is a reminder that we protect our intellectual property, delivering the value of that protection to customers through the effectiveness of our program.”

The SmartDrive advanced triggering capabilities improve the overall effectiveness of the program by identifying specific high-risk driving that causes the most serious safety situations for fleets, including close-following, excessive lane departures as a result of drowsiness or distracted driving, swerving at high speeds, U-turns and entering turns with excessive speed, which can lead to roll-overs.

• Advanced Maneuver Triggers: Leveraging SmartDrive’s database of more than 80 million analyzed driving video events, data scientists developed triggering algorithms based on driving patterns that demonstrated a propensity for risk in certain vehicles across specific fleet types. These maneuver-based triggers use a combination of input signals in real time to identify risky driving patterns. Some of these events may develop over a longer period rather than at an instant in time, and thus require that the system monitor the risky period for up to 25 seconds in order to accurately identify, trigger and capture the maneuver.
• Active Safety System Triggers: By integrating the engine control unit (ECU) with on-board active safety systems, such as roll-stability control, collision mitigation, lane departure warning systems, and anti-lock braking, SmartDrive intelligently triggers when those systems engage, isolating safety events from system warnings by placing key ‘compound rules’ into the triggering algorithm. SmartDrive’s open data and video event platform was architected to integrate with other on-board systems to leverage data directly from the engine computer to trigger events. Because Active Safety Systems are designed for and tuned to specific vehicles and their manufacturers, they are highly effective at identifying risk and are the best leading indicators of future incidents, such as roll-overs and collisions. By leveraging this information, SmartDrive’s platform has evolved well beyond just accelerometer-only triggering to deliver the most complete picture of risk from a video-based safety system.

SmartDrive is the first in the industry to dynamically move the trigger point of the event to increase ‘pre-trigger time’ to 28 seconds in order to capture the complete maneuver or riskiest portion of the event, which is essential to understanding the root cause. With following too close, for example, the 20 seconds or more that led up to the point where collision mitigation engaged contains the riskiest driving, but fixed event capture will miss 10 or more seconds of this time.

“We are actively investing in the development of our open platform, the data science that drives our predictive algorithms, and the technology behind our software-as-a-service safety program,” Mitgang said. “The market interest in systems that can take true advantage of vehicle ‘big data’ continues to grow, increasing the value of our portfolio.”