Autobrilliance LLC

This prior art search report presents the mappings of the various elements of claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 6,615,137 (’1137 Patent), titled “Method and apparatus for transferring information between vehicles”, from assignee Autobrilliance LLC, published on 02 September 2003.

This patent describes an inter-vehicle communication system for collision avoidance. Vehicle collisions often happen when a driver is not aware of an oncoming vehicle or object. Other collision risks are when a fast vehicle approaches a pileup on the road or driving on curved roads in low visibility conditions. The ‘137 patent discloses the generation of sensor data for areas and any object around a vehicle. From this sensor data, the kinematic state of any detected object in the area is determined. The kinematic states of the detected object and the local vehicle are compared, and if a collision is likely to occur, an automatic warning is issued to the driver. This patent also discloses that the sensor data and kinematic state of the local vehicle are transmitted to other vehicles, to provide notifications of possible collision conditions.