Kawasaki Motors, Ltd.

Atsushi Sano

Kazuya Nagasaka

Takeshi Nakajima

Hiroshi Ishii

Taro Iwamoto

Kazuhiro Ichikawa

Taichi Inaba

Takenori Terada

A utility vehicle includes: a travel structure including a front wheel, a rear wheel, a steering structure mounted to the front wheel, and a drive source that drives the front wheel and/or the rear wheel; circuitry that controls the travel structure to effect autonomous travel without manned operation in a given travel area; and a vehicle location detector that detects a location of the utility vehicle. During the autonomous travel, the circuitry determines, based on road condition data where the travel area is divided into regions with different predetermined road condition levels, to which of the road condition levels a road condition of a region ahead of the location of the utility vehicle in a travel direction belongs, and the circuitry controls the travel structure such that a given travel parameter is within a corresponding one of permissible ranges predetermined respectively in association with the road condition levels.

Utility vehicle controllable within permissible range based on determined road condition level

A control requirement determiner includes: a storage that stores at least one piece of location information and one piece of behavior information as past data in which the location information and the behavior information are associated with each other, the location information indicating a geographic location, the behavior information being related to a behavior exhibited by a vehicle body of a vehicle at the location indicated by the location information when the vehicle traveled in the past; and processing circuitry that calculates, based on the vehicle speed information, the acceleration information, and the sprung weight information of the past data, a degree of unevenness of a road surface, and determines, based on the calculated degree of unevenness of the road surface, a control requirement to be imposed on a control target of a rough terrain vehicle at the location indicated by the location information of the past data during travel.

Control requirement determiner, rough terrain vehicle, and control requirement determining method for calculating surface unevenness

A utility vehicle includes: a travel structure including a front wheel, a rear wheel, a steering structure mounted to the front wheel, and a drive source that drives the front wheel and/or the rear wheel; at least one operator used to operate the travel structure; circuitry that controls the travel structure; and a mode switcher that switches the utility vehicle between a manned operation mode in which the utility vehicle travels in response to operations on the operator and an autonomous travel mode in which the circuitry allows the utility vehicle to autonomously travel on a given travel route without any operations on the operator.

Autonomous and manual mode swtiching for utility vehicle

A utility vehicle includes: a travel structure including a front wheel, a rear wheel, a steering structure mounted to the front wheel, and a drive source that drives the front wheel and/or the rear wheel; circuitry that controls the travel structure to effect autonomous travel without manned operation in a given travel area; a route setter that sets a travel route for the autonomous travel; a vehicle location detector that detects a location of the utility vehicle; and a target detector that detects a monitoring target in the travel area. In case that the monitoring target is detected at a location during the autonomous travel, the circuitry stores the location of the monitoring target as history information. The route setter sets a reference point at the location where the monitoring target was detected and sets the travel route based on the reference point.

Growing community of inventors

Kobe, Japan

Atsushi Sano