Toyoda Koki Kabushiki Kaisha

Akihiro Oono

Yutaka Mori

Kunihiko Eto

Kazumasa Kodama

Sadamu Kato

Hideo Mizoguchi

A motor vehicle is provided with a driving status discrimination device, which includes a detector for detecting a parameter signal (e.g., vehicle speed, engine rotational speed, the opening degree of an engine throttle valve, or the like) relating to the driving speed of the motor vehicle at a predetermined interval, and a microcomputer for processing the parameter signals input thereto. The microprocessor calculates a differentiated value of the parameter signal and stores the differential value in a memory device. The memory device has a plurality of memory locations each storing the differential value. The microprocessor futher calculates an integrated value of a plurality of differentiated values stored in the memory device and discriminates various driving status from one another (e.g., a mountain road driving from a high speed driving) based upon the calculated integrated value.

Motor vehicle with driving status detection device

A motor vehicle is provided with a driving status discrimination device, which includes a steering angle sensor for detecting the rotational angle of a steering wheel and a microcomputer for reading and processing the steering angle signal each time the vehicle runs a predetermined distance. The microcomputer identifies one of steering angular ranges of intervals to which each detected steering angle belongs so as to record the frequency at which the steering wheel was turned to each steering angular interval. The microcomputer modifies the frequency for each steering angle interval with a weighting coefficient determined for the steering angular interval and then, calculates a total or integrated value of the modified frequencies for the steering angular intervals. Further, the microcomputer discriminates town street driving from mountain road driving based upon the integrated value so that the assisting power generated by a power steering mechanism of the motor vehicle can be controlled based upon the result of such discrimination.

Growing community of inventors

Okazaki, Japan

Akihiro Oono