2061 results about "Severe weather" patented technology

Free space optical communications systems which resist atmospheric attenuation of optical beams is presented. Very long link distances remain highly reliable despite fog and other inclement weather conditions which otherwise tend to hamper optical transmissions in an atmospheric air column. Systems include primary elements as follows: a plurality of transceivers and at least one air column optical path. Each transceiver includes specialized light sources which produce radiation in the Mid-IR spectral region. In addition, these sources are very compact and well organized in view of their intended deployment environment. Further, special modulation means are joined with particular light sources to address high bandwith needs. In addition, specialized detection strategies are presented whereby sensitivity is improved. Alternative versions and configurations directed to specialized function are also described in detail.

The invention discloses an active safety type assistant driving method based on stereoscopic vision. An active safety type assistant driving system comprehensively utilizes an OME information technology, consists of a stereoscopic vision subsystem, an image immediate processing subsystem and a safety assistant driving subsystem and comprises two sets of high resolution CCD (charge-coupled device) cameras, an ambient light sensor, a two-channel video collecting card, a synchronous controller, a data transmission circuit, a power supply circuit, an image immediate processing algorithms library, a voice reminding module, a screen display module and an active safety type driving control module. According to the active safety type assistant driving method, separation lines and parameters such as relative distance, relative speed, the relative acceleration and the like of dangerous objects such as front vehicles, front bicycles, front pedestrians and the like can be accurately identified in real time in sunny days, cloudy days, at nigh and under the severe weather conditions such as rain with snow, dense fog and the like, so that the system can prompt a driver to adopt countermeasure through voice and can realize automatic deceleration and emergency brake at emergency situation, thereby ensuring safe travel in a whole day.

A compact, portable weather station for predicting local extreme weather conditions and for reporting remote weather conditions. The weather station has sensors for determining local temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, ambient light, and ambient static charge. A microprocessor has memory for storing data relating to past weather conditions and data processing apparatus and algorithms for determining probable developing weather conditions responsive to sensed local conditions. The weather station has a radio receiver for communicating with global weather reporting communications systems utilizing cellular communications. Operating commands, predicted local weather conditions, and remote weather conditions are annunciated in synthesized voice in any one of a variety of predetermined languages. The weather station includes voice synthesizing and recognition apparatus for annunciating verbal prompts and weather conditions, and for responding to vocal control. The weather station is formed in two separable components, one having sensors and the other having radio communications apparatus.

A system and method for generating storm warnings which are precisely tailored automatically for a particular individual or business user's geographic location of interest, which may be provided automatically to the individual user or business. The user establishes an individualized user profile, in which the user may define a particular location of interest and a contact address to which a personalized storm warning is to be delivered. The user may also establish a storm profile defining attribute characteristics of a storm for which the user desires a storm warning to be provided, and an amount of advanced warning to be provided by the personalized storm warning. A detailed and accurate storm track which includes information describing storm characteristics (severe weather conditions) as well as the current location and predicted track of movement of storm, is generated. The storm track may be generated automatically from weather radar data, such as NEXRAD data, either alone, or in combination with local live weather radar information, to provide a more accurate storm track. Generated storm tracks are compared to individual user profiles. Personalized storm warnings identifying in detail the storm conditions approaching a user location of interest and arrival time information for that location of interest are generated for user profiles defining locations of interest within a predicted storm track, if the storm track characteristics of the storm meet the attribute and advance warning characteristics specified in the storm profile established by the user. The personalized storm warnings may be delivered to users via e-mail, cell phone, pager, etc.

A system and method for generating storm warnings which are precisely tailored automatically for a particular individual or business user's geographic location of interest, which maybe provided automatically to the individual user or business. The user establishes an individualized user profile, in which the user may define a particular location of interest and a contact address to which a personalized storm warning is to be delivered. The user may also establish a storm profile defining attribute characteristics of a storm for which the user desires a storm warning to be provided, and an amount of advanced warning to be provided by the personalized storm warning. A detailed and accurate storm track, which includes information describing storm characteristics (severe weather conditions) as well as the current location and predicted track of movement of the storm, is generated. The storm track may be generated automatically from weather radar data, such as NEXRAD data, either alone, or in combination with local live weather radar information, to provide a more accurate storm track. Generated storm tracks are compared to individual user profiles. Personalized storm warnings identifying in detail the storm conditions approaching a user location of interest and arrival time information for that location of interest are generated for user profiles defining locations of interest within a predicted storm track, if the storm track characteristics of the storm meet the attribute and advance warning characteristics specified in the storm profile established by the users. The personalized storm warnings may be delivered to users via e-mail, cell phone, pager, etc.

Apparatus and processes to automatically power-down a computer system upon determination of the presence, imminence, or forecast of severe weather in the local area. A computer system receives data relating to a weather forecast for a particular local area from a weather service communication server and, based on a determination of the presence, imminence or forecast of severe weather in the local area, initiates an automatic power-down sequence. A delay may be provided to allow the user time to abort the initiation of the automatic power-down sequence. The data may be transmitted in any suitable manner, e.g., over a telephone line through the PSTN, using the Internet, using a paging system, etc. The weather service communication server is provided with the particular local area relating to the computer system. For instance, in the case of a dial-up telephone call to the weather service communication server, call related information such as the telephone exchange number and / or the area code in Caller ID information can be used by the weather service communication server to determine the local area relating to the particular computer system. Thus, a user is provided additional security against damage which may be caused to all or a portion of a computer system due to lightning strikes, downed telephone poles, etc. as a result of severe weather in a local area.

A method and apparatus for detecting the presence of objects in a vehicle operator's blind spots. The apparatus comprises a side-facing Doppler radar system using continuous wave (CW) transmission with frequency modulation (FM) operation from a frequency modulation switching technique. The radar system determines the presence, range and closing rate of detected targets. The radar system detects targets even when operated in adverse weather conditions and will not generate false warnings due to rain clutter caused by wet roads and other wet surroundings. The radar system uses ranging techniques to reject false targets that are detected outside of a predetermined target detection zone. In accordance with the present invention, the radar system indicates that a target is detected if and only if any part of the target is within the detection zone and it: (1) remains in front of the antenna for at least TH1 seconds; (2) is at a range between Rangemin and Rangemax; and (3) is moving faster than Closing-Speedmin relative to the antenna. By rejecting targets that are closer than Rangemin feet to the antenna, false alarms due to rain clutter are dramatically reduced. Also, by rejecting targets that are further than Rangemax feet from the antenna, the radar system reduces false alarms caused by wet foliage and other wet "non-road" surroundings. In one embodiment, the radar system uses a patch array antenna oriented into a diamond-shape configuration to effectively create a natural linear amplitude taper that aids in rejecting clutter caused by wet road surfaces.

A method for conveying both a risk and the degree of risk of a severe weather at a particular geographic location is disclosed. The method involves receiving a location of interest from a requestor, forecasting a risk of severe weather for a specific time period associated with the location, computing a degree of severity level of the risk of severe weather for the location, and generating a report containing the risk forecast and the computed severity level that can be delivered or provided to the requestor. The severity level of the risk of severe weather is provided in an easy to understand graphic or other format.

A solar collector arrangement includes a number of assemblies (1), which are immersed or partially immersed in a pond of water (2). Each assembly (1) includes a parabolic reflector (3) and an absorber (6). Barriers (10) are located on or near the surface of the water (2) and operate to reduce waves which may otherwise disturb the direct passage of sunlight in windy conditions. The complete immersion of the assembly (1) in the liquid serves to simultaneously protect and cool the apparatus, while allowing ease of sun10 tracking movements by buoyancy induced rotation. Partially immersed versions have higher efficiency and protect against severe weather by inverting into the water.

The invention discloses a scheme of a flying lifesaving system fixedly or movably arranged on the bridge or deck, characterized in that: a large-diameter main ducted coaxial reversible dual-rotor body is used for bearing main lift; small-diameter ducted rotor bodies are symmetrically arranged around the large-diameter main ducted coaxial reversible dual-rotor body in the same plane, connecting arms can freely move in the forms of stretching, twisting, shaking and swinging, thus the effects of bearing assistant lift, mainly controlling the direction and resisting vortex ring are achieved; and a variable inertia system and an energy delivery dragging cable system are arranged in the main rotor. The device can resist turbulent flow sudden shearing transition winds and has anti-adverse wind long-endurance submersible capability, can fly within the length of the dragging cable or the distance of wireless remote like helicopter rescue principles under sea conditions in bad weather and directly fly beyond the persons in water to hover to conduct marine salvage; and can land on the water surface to float to release rescue devices to let the persons in water enter, and swan the rescue devices by using the motive force of the rotors and the pulling force of the energy delivery dragging cable to the lifeboats to save people, thus the rescue scheme and equipment of the rescue devices under sea conditions in bad weather are achieved.

The invention provides a 4D real traffic scene simulation based severe weather early-warning management system and method. The system comprises a multi-factor omnibearing tracking detection radar sensor, a data collection and analysis processor, a cloud processing server and main equipment of a 4D simulation management work station; a radar tracks vehicles and pedestrians on the road, obtains position information of the vehicles and pedestrians, and triggers a license plate snapshot camera to carry out real-time snapshot on vehicles synchronously; the system obtains node weather information ofthe present road to simulate the traffic road condition environment in a 4D manner and start an early warning rule, the road which the vehicles / pedestrians are passing is determined according to theposition information of the vehicles and pedestrians; and the alarm information is sent to the vehicles and pedestrians to pass the road in a point to point or broadcasting manner to make alarm prompt. According to 4D real traffic scene simulation, a road manager can use the system to make an emergency plan, carry out road control and rescue of vehicles and pedestrians in an accident, informationis pushed to avoid the planned route, and the risk of high-speed travel in the severe weather is reduced.

A system and method for automatically regulating access control levels in an access control system based on prevailing security levels including homeland security levels, local environment situations such as crowds, rioting, looting, severe weather and temporal states such as workdays, weekends, holidays, and open houses.

The invention discloses a vehicle tracking method based on machine learning and optical flow. A vehicle model is obtained through one-off off-line training and used for detecting vehicle block mass Blobs in a video flow in real time, bidirectional pyramid optical flow tracking is performed on calculation characteristic point sets of all the vehicle mass block Blobs, and results of optical flow tracking in the forward direction and the backward direction are analyzed and filtered, so that multiple targets are stably and accurately tracked to form vehicle tracks. According to the complete vehicle tracking solution, the vehicle tracking method based on machine learning and optical flow can be widely applied to the fields of intelligent traffic, electronic polices, video monitoring, unmanned driving and others; by the utilization of the tracking method, a user can solve the classic problems in an existing tracking algorithm well, the multiple targets, such as long-period vehicle staying, size scale changing, shadowing, local shielding and touching, can be stably and accurately tracked; particularly, the vehicle tracking method has the good effects under the conditions of severe weather, a low illumination level and a high noisy point.

The invention discloses a monocular camera and millimeter wave radar fused object identification and positioning method and system, and belongs to the technical field of multi-sensor fusion. The method comprises the following steps: step 1, sensor data acquisition and frame synchronization; 1a, millimeter wave radar and monocular camera data acquisition; 1b, data sequence matching based on frame synchronization; 2, recognition of an object and a boundary based on the neural network processing image; 2a, training in advance an instance partition neural network based on Mask-RCNN; 2b, completingobject recognition and image instance segmentation by using a neural network; 3, coordinate system conversion and data fusion; 3a, under the condition of known external parameters between sensors, converting radar point cloud to an image coordinate system; 3b, completing object matching information fusion based on an instance segmentation result; and 3c, displaying the object category and the object spatial position under the three-dimensional coordinate system. The method is more stable, and the influence of severe weather on data acquisition can be overcome.

In one embodiment, an electronically controlled hatch system for safe ingress, egress, hazard detection, and methods thereof are provided to reduce or eliminate hazards to personnel, including protection of people above and below a scuttle hatch, access port, skylight or elevated deck. Said hatch system reduces the risk of falls while ascending or descending a ladder through an access port. In certain embodiments, severe weather, hazard, security, and other safety information are detected and transmitted to a central control unit for processing and regulating the opening and closing of a hatch covering the access port and / or raising and lowering a safety railing system based on said information and / or user input. Said hatch system may include an actuator and guides for automatically locking / unlocking and opening / closing a hatch, an actuator and guides for automatically raising / lowering a railing system, hazard, security, lighting, and other safety monitoring detectors / apparatuses, and a centralized controller.

A doorway assembly, preferably for a sliding door, includes a barrier plate extending across the lower portion of the doorway to prevent the intrusion of water during severe weather conditions. A notch within the barrier plate, provides a substantially obstruction-free passageway through the doorway and, is sealed by compressing a compressible gasket, attached to a compression panel mounted to move with the sliding door, against the barrier plate. An actuator is structured to move the compression panel toward the barrier plate in response to operation of a latch lever, thereby compressing the compressible gasket and providing a seal between the compression panel and the barrier plate adjacent the notch.

A navigation system integrated with knowledge of active emergency alerting system alert data and up to date Doppler weather radar data, to provide a visual representation of an alert area and / or current weather patterns on a map, and to automatically navigate a subscriber device away from an affected area, e.g., an alert area, an area under severe weather. The inventive navigation system displays NEXRAD Doppler weather radar data on a map by integrating a NEXRAD feed into the map and allowing a user to enable / disable the NEXRAD feed as a map overlay. The inventive navigation system also automatically routes or reroutes a subscriber device to avoid areas under severe weather. The navigation system is also integrated with a conventional CMSP gateway in an emergency alerting system to provide: a visual representation of an alert area on a map and to automatically route / reroute a subscriber device around an alert area.

The invention discloses bidirectional filtration-based real-time image de-hazing and enhancing technology, which is particularly applicable to the de-hazing and enhancement of images and videos under severe weather conditions and belongs to the field of digital image processing. The technology specifically comprises the following steps of: estimating an atmospheric light vector value A of an input hazy image; educing an atmospheric light curtain graphic V; calculating the irradiance R of the de-hazed image according to the calculated atmospheric light vector and the atmospheric light curtain graphic; and finally enhancing the calculated irradiance. The technology can accurately estimate the atmospheric light vector by a dark element-based method and estimate the atmospheric light curtain based on a bidirectional filtering method, reduces the calculation complexity and can ensure the image de-hazing effect; meanwhile, by improving the bidirectional filtering method, the technology increases the image processing speed qualitatively.

A severe weather monitoring system including a local event detector wherein the local event detector includes at least one electric field monitor and at least one electromagnetic sensor. A local grid computer receives local data from the electric field monitor and the electromagnetic sensor, the local grid computer is connected to the Internet to periodically send information about local environmental conditions to local and remote communications devices, such as computers and cell phones. The local grid computer includes software to analyze the local data and to post the local data to a computer network and wherein the local grid computer can trigger a local on site alert in event of the sensed data indicating a dangerous condition.

A sliding door assembly includes a barrier plate extending across the lower portion of the doorway to prevent the intrusion of water during severe weather conditions. A notch within the barrier plate, enlarging the passageway opened by the sliding door to form an obstruction-free passageway, is sealed by compressing a gasket between the barrier plate and a compression plate mounted to move with the sliding door. An actuator, mounted along the floor adjacent the compression plate with the sliding door closed, moves the compression plate toward the barrier plate, compressing the gasket, in response to operation of a latch lever.

The invention provides an automobile traffic safety simulation driving education training system which enables students to experience safety risks in the daily traffic environment and grasp disposal skills in an emergency state on the basis of a basic training driving technique and enhances the safe driving awareness of the students. The automobile traffic safety simulation driving education training system provided by the invention is characterized by comprising a display component, a sound effect component, a control component, a selection input component, a signal acquisition and processing component, a main control computer component, a cockpit component and a multi-DOF (degree of freedom) moving component, wherein a complicated traffic environment safe driving training module, a typical dangerous state safe-driving training module, a severe weather condition safe-driving training module and a safety comparison driving training module are arranged in the main control computer component; the main control computer component is respectively connected with the display component, the sound effect component and the multi-DOF moving component; the control component is integrated in the cockpit component; the control component and the selection input component are connected with the signal acquisition and processing component; and the signal acquisition and processing component isconnected with the main control computer component.

Autonomously driven vehicles operate in rain, snow and other adverse weather conditions. An on-board vehicle sensor has a beam with a diameter that is only intermittently blocked by rain, snow, dustor other obscurant particles. This allows an obstacle detection processor is to tell the difference between obstacles, terrain variations and obscurant particles, thereby enabling the vehicle driving control unit to disregard the presence of obscurant particles along the route taken by the vehicle. The sensor may form part of a LADAR or RADAR system or a video camera. The obstacle detection processor may receive time-spaced frames divided into cells or pixels, whereby groups of connected cells or pixels and / or cells or pixels that persist over longer periods of time are interpreted to be obstacles or terrain variations. The system may further including an input for receiving weather-specific configuration parameters to adjust the operation of the obstacle detection processor.

A wireless phone navigation system that obtains and uses weather system data to alert and re-route a user around inclement weather located at a point on the user's navigated route, as predicted to be at a time in the future that the user would otherwise be expected to traverse that part of the navigated route. A weather polygon is drawn around a perimeter of a weather system obtained from current weather data. The weather polygon (or other shape) may be drawn based on configurable weather items to be avoided, e.g., rain, ice conditions, snow on ground, etc. The re-routing may be based on a prediction of a future position of a weather system with respect to where on a navigated route a user will be at that future time.

An automated system for monitoring and testing a sump pump installation includes an electrically-actuated valve which admits liquid to the liquid container in response to a valve control signal. A test control module includes a test control circuit which when actuated supplies a valve control signal to initiate a test cycle during which liquid is admitted to the container to cause the liquid level in the container to rise, after which the sump pump discharges liquid from the container until a predetermined event terminates the test cycle. An indicator circuit indicates in response to completion of the test cycle whether the test was successful or unsuccessful. A communications circuit is included which receives and verifies control signals addressed to the system from an external originator to allow a test cycle to be remotely initiated in the event of impending severe weather or other threats.

An adult stroller includes a movable frame adapted for use by a person to assist in ambulatory movement, and a canopy that is positioned substantially above and carried by the movable frame. A flexible shield extends downwardly from the front portion of the canopy to at least partially cover a front portion of the movable frame. Such coverage effectively protects a passenger from the environment or potential inclement weather.

A security system that secures a building includes a weather detector for detecting weather conditions, such as thunder or high winds, which are likely to cause false alarms in sensors such as an acoustic glass break sensor, shock sensor and vibration sensor. The weather detector may include a sensing component that senses atmospheric conditions external to the building, such as temperature, pressure, wind speed and / or lightning. The weather detector may also include a component for receiving a data communication, such as from a radio, Internet, or telephone link, indicating that the weather condition is present in a vicinity of the building. The security system operates in a bad weather mode by requiring corroboration of intrusion detection signals from the sensors that can cause false alarms.

A system and method for advanced warning of severe weather for general aviation aircraft is presented. An aircraft includes an onboard weather tracker which monitors atmospheric condition changes. The weather tracker uses data from an onboard barometric altimeter and a GPS device to calculate air pressure changes in order to identify when the aircraft is flying into a low-pressure zone. The weather tracker uses the air pressure's rate of change and the aircraft's speed to determine the criticality of a situation and appropriately notifies a pilot. The weather tracker provides the pilot with local airport information and alternative flight pattern information per the pilot's request.

A method for acquiring road data onboard a vehicle, the road data associated with a segment of road is provided. The method obtains, via vehicle onboard sensors, sensor data associated with current weather conditions, current road conditions, and a physical road state; determines whether the current weather conditions indicate existence of severe weather, whether the current road conditions indicate potential slip, and whether the physical road state indicates one or more road anomalies; generates a road data result, based on existence of severe weather, potential slip, and one or more road anomalies; and transmits the road data result, via a vehicle onboard telematics unit.