Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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Method and Apparatus for Recording Incidents
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention generally relates to the field of navigation and recording
apparatus. More particularly, this invention relates to digital imaging and
audio
apparatus used for recording events before, during and after an incident
pertaining to a
land, sea or air based transportation system.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
Every few minutes around the country and the world, there is an accident
involving a land, sea or air based transportation system. In some cases, there
are no
survivors or eye-witnesses to give an account of what happened. Even with eye-
witnesses or survivors, there are often disputes of the different accounts of
what actually
happened. As a result, millions of dollars are wasted in lengthy
investigations and
litigation leading to higher insurance premiums for society. Moreover, unable
to
accurately determine the cause of an accident, lessons are not learned to
prevent future
reoccurrence of similar tragedies.
For many years, 'black box' apparatus using audio and electro-mechanical
recording means have been deployed on aircraft to provide investigators
important clues
of what may have occurred before a plane crash. Likewise, 'black box'
apparatus using
electro-mechanical means can be found near the engines of some land vehicles
which
record the speed and operator performance data that allows investigators to
recreate a
profile of what has occurred based on such physical data. However, one of the
most
valuable forms of evidence, a visual recording of the actual scene within the
vicinity of
the subject, are often unavailable.
In theory, one can use a security camera or a camcorder to capture the visual
scene of an entire trip. In practice, these kinds of recording systems are
only suitable for
law enforcement purposes as in a police car or inside a building. This is
because in the
case of law enforcement and security applications, every minute of what has
occurred
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can be crucial in an investigation. In such applications, there is no way to
automatically
determine what is important and to just record the portion of the scenario and
to skip the
rest. However, in the case of accident or incident recording, the general
pattern is that
only the last few minutes of the record prior to, during and after the
accident contain
useful information. While capturing a few pictures after an accident has
occurred is
insufficient and too late, to record scenes of an entire trip is not cost
effective and is
wasteful because it requires a lot of storage media.
Prior art provided by US 5,596,382 and US 5,568,211 as well as US 5,262,813
disclose of mechanical apparatus able to capture, via a mechanical camera, a
road scene
upon impact activated by mechanical trigger mechanisms during a car accident.
However, these systems relied solely on rigid mechanical capturing means with
limited
storage capabilities and are not very flexible in the manner they operate and
thus cannot
be used conveniently to provide the maximum benefit. These prior inventions
focused
primarily on trigger mechanisms using mechanical means for land vehicles upon
impact.
US 5,899,956 disclosed a digital navigation system capable of recording
accident scene for land vehicles. Despite of the fact that the disclosed
invention
incorporated a mechanism which satisfies the need to automatically capture and
preserve the accident scene moments prior to, during and after the occurrence
of an
accident, it is designed primarily to be used inside a land-based vehicle.
What is
needed is an apparatus with a narrowed functionality suitable to be used
inside a land,
sea and air transportation system. In addition, such an apparatus should be
able to be
used as an external device for monitoring moving transportation systems and to
record
an incident when it occurs. Examples of such external usage outside of a
moving
vehicle include roadway intersections, rail-road crossings, underground subway
stations. Such an improvement through simplification and generalization is
necessary
in order to reduce manufacturing cost by allowing the same apparatus to be
used in
multiple environments for a wider population of the public in the society.
Furthermore, many documented cases of accidents are caused by operators not
being alert or awake while operating the vehicles. Therefore, in addition to
having
forward-looking capability in an accident recording apparatus, it is
beneficially to
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provide a backward-looking capability to capture the activities of the
operator and the
side and back view of an accident scene.
As a modern society that values human lives, the need to be able to have
available visual presentation for safety engineers in preventing future
accidents of
similar nature has long been called for. Given the increasing high cost of
incident
investigation, liability and litigation, the ability to establish cause, and
place fault with
viable evidence is becoming more urgent. What is desperately needed in the
society is
an incident recording apparauts that can be manufactured in a cost effective
manner
capable of capturing and preserving the actual evidence prior to, during and
after an
incident regardless of whether a passenger is riding in a land, sea or air
based
transportation system.
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SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is generally directed to satisfying the needs set forth
above.
One objective of the invention is to capture the visual scene of an incident
so
many seconds before, during and after the incident has occurred involving a
land
vehicle to include a passenger car, bus, van, truck and train.
Another objective of the invention is to capture the visual scene of an
incident
so many seconds before, during and after the incident has occurred involving a
sea-
based vehicle to include a speed-boat.
Another objective of the invention is to capture the visual scene of an
incident
so many seconds before, during and after the incident has occurred involving
an air-
based transportation system such as a passenger jet.
Another objective of the invention is to capture the activities of the
operator of a
transportation system so many seconds before, during and after an incident has
occurred.
Yet another objective of the invention is to capture the sound wave of an
incident so marry seconds before, during and after the incident has occurred
as a
supplement to the visual evidence.
Yet another objective of the invention is to allow the same apparatus to be
used
as an external monitoring device for recording incidents of moving subjects.
Yet another objective of the invention is to allow the same apparatus to be
used
as a hand-held device for recording incidents.
Yet another objective of the invention is to reduce the manufacturing cost by
allowing the same apparatus to be used in multiple environments for
applications
having similar patterns.
In accordance with one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the
foregoing need can be satisfied by providing a digital incident recording
apparatus,
comprising: a control unit, 10, for operating the apparatus; a memory unit,
20, for
holding computer executable instructions; a persistent memory unit, 30, for
providing
persistent storage; an imaging capturing unit, 40, for capturing visual scene;
a digital
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sensor, 50, for triggering an automatic preservation of captured scenes, an
optional
digital audio recorder, 60, for capturing surrounding sound wave to sync up
with the
recorded images, a power source, 70, to allow for continued operation and, 80,
a
protective housing.
Other objects and advantages of this invention will become readily apparent as
the invention is better understood by reference to the accompanying drawings
and the
detailed description that follows.
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BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing the essential components of one
embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram showing in more detail the essential
components of one embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram showing one preferred embodiment of how
to preserve a fixed number of images using a finite storage for an unlimited
period of
time.
FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram showing another preferred embodiment of
how to preserve a fixed number of images using a finite storage for an
unlimited period
of time.
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DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
Referring now to the drawings wherein are shown preferred embodiments and
wherein like reference numerals designate like elements throughout, there is
shown in
FIG. 1 a schematic block diagram showing the essential components of one
embodiment in accordance with the present invention.
As shown in FIG. 1, the digital system comprises: a control unit, 10, for
operating the system; a memory unit, 20, for temporily storage; a forward-
looking
image capturing unit, 40a, for capturing front view scenes; a backward looking
image
capturing unit, 40b, for capturing the rear and side view as well as the
activities of the
operator, 90; a digital sound recorder, 60, for capturing the surrounding
sound wave to
sync up with the recorded images captured by the imaging unit, 40; a
persistent storage,
30, for providing persistent storage of the images captured by the image
capturing unit,
40, and sound wave captured by the sound recorder, 60; a power source, 70, to
supply
the power to allow for continuing operation and a protective housing, 80, to
protect the
overall construction of the system.
FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram showing in more detail the essential
components of one embodiment of the present invention. It is seen to comprise:
an
image capturing unit, 40, which can be a CCD or CMOS device; a memory unit 20;
a
persistent storage 30; a digital sensor, 50, for sensing external events as to
trigger the
termination of capturing process of images and audio so as to preserve the
data in the
persistent storage, 30 and a sound recorder, 60 and a control unit, 10, which
connects
to all major units to provide overall synchronization and operational control.
FIG. 3 is a detailed block diagram showing one preferred embodiment
wherein images captured by image capturing unit, 40, are fed into a persistent
storage,
30, which has a limited storage capacity made up of N numbers of individual
storage
cells, 100a, 100b and so on. The captured images are to be stored into each
cell in a
first-in-first-out fashion such that at any given time, a fixed number of
images are to
be buffered up representing the consecutive frames of actual scene. With such
an
arrangement, the latest images captured will replace the earliest images when
the last
storage cell is reached until such time when the control unit, 10, stops any
further
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images to be inserted into a cell so that the buffered images can be
persistently
preserved. The number of consecutive images to be preserved is a function of
the
number of storage cell N. This mechanism is designed to overcome the storage
problem associated with the fact that an incident can occur at any time within
an
unlimited time span, therefore it is essential to have an economical way to
selectively
preserve only valuable data.
Fig. 4 is another preferred embodiment wherein the captured images are to be
first inserted into a volatile memory, 20, and from which the data are then
pull into
the persistent storage, 30, controlled by the control unit, 10.
It is to be noted that in addition to holding captured images, the persistent
storage, 30, along with the storage mechanism as shown in Fig 3 and 4, can be
used
to hold digital sound wave captured by the audio unit, 60. Furthermore, the
persistent
storage, 30, can be used to hold computer executable instructions and thus
replaces or
eliminates the memory unit, 20, if so chosen. It is worth to point out that
persistent
storage, 30, may be substituted by other forms of persistent storage media to
achieve
a similar result even though most of such persistent storage media tend to
have a
slower performance. Moreover, the persistent storage, 30, can also be achieved
or
simulated by contineously powering up a volatile memory so as to retain its
contains.
Likewise, the control unit, 10, can be selected from the group consisting of a
micro-
processor, a micro-controller, a DSP, a PAL, an EPLD, a FPGA and other forms
of
programmable logic circuits to provide the necessary control functionality.
Although the foregoing disclosure relates to preferred embodiments of the
invention, it is understood that these details have been given for the
purposes of
clarification only. Various changes and modifications of the invention will be
apparent,
to one having ordinary skill in the art, without departing from the spirit of
the invention
as hereinafter set forth in the claims.
