Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Hiroshi Ataka

Yoshimi Furukawa

Tsunefumi Niiyama

An automatic transmission on an automobile has an input shaft, an output shaft, a plurality of power transmitting paths disposed between the input and output shafts for establishing respective gear positions, and a plurality of engaging elements for selecting one of the power transmitting paths at a time. A shift controller disengages a previous-position engaging element and engages a next-position engaging element to switch from one of the power transmitting paths to another for thereby effecting a shift from a previous gear position to a next gear position. The shift controller provides a plurality of previous-position stages for controlling the previous-position engaging element with respective different characteristics to vary forces to disengage the previous-position engaging element in each of the gear positions, and a plurality of next-position stages for controlling the next-position engaging element with respective different characteristics to vary forces to engage the next-position engaging element in each of the gear positions. The shift controller executes the previous-position stages and the next-position stages to effect a shift between gear positions according to a change in the rotational speed of the input shaft, and executes all or selected ones of the previous-position stages and the next-position stages successively in order.

Apparatus for controlling automatic transmission

The maneuvering area of a front and rear wheel steering vehicle is minimized by making the rear wheels follow the trajectories of the front wheels. This can be accomplished by steering the rear wheels so that they may coincide, in a spatially fixed absolute coordinate system, with the steer angles of the front wheels when they were located at the same locations as the current positions of the rear wheels. Further proposed is an algorithm for achieving the required rear wheel steering control which comprises the steps of detecting the yaw angle of the vehicle body and subtracting from the steer angles of the front wheels at the time point when the front wheels were located at the current positions of the rear wheels, the change in the yaw angle of the vehicle body from the said time point to the current time point. Thus, the vehicle is able to go through a most narrow and tortuous road for the given size of the vehicle without deviating from the prescribed course of the road, and the driver is required only to get the front part of the vehicle pass through narrow points of the road without paying attention to the rear part of the vehicle.

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Saitama, Japan

Hiroshi Ataka