Visteon Global Technolgoies, Inc.

Nissan Technical Center North America, Inc.

Jack Auflick

David S Cheney

Steve Tengler

Gregory Roger Hamel

Michael R Remenak

Robert H Benedict

Angelo A Giannotti

Dennis Allen

A vehicle on-board unit of a host vehicle is configured to communicate with other vehicle to alert the driver of a potential braking situation in a preceding vehicle. The vehicle on-board unit has an incoming message receiving section, an incoming message relevancy section and a driver warning section. The incoming message receiving section receives a preceding vehicle message containing throttle release data of a preceding vehicle located in front of the host vehicle. The incoming message relevancy section performs a relevancy determination of the throttle release data received. The driver warning section selectively alerts a driver of the host vehicle of a potential braking situation of the preceding vehicle based upon the relevancy determination.

Vehicle on-board unit

A vehicle on-board unit of a host vehicle is configured to activate its brake lights upon determining a vehicle traveling condition exists that is indicative of a potentially inadequate safety zone between the host vehicle and a following vehicle. The vehicle on-board unit has a vehicle traveling condition detecting section, an automatic brake light triggering section and a brake light activating section. The vehicle traveling condition detecting section detects the vehicle traveling condition indicative of a potentially inadequate safety zone. The automatic brake light triggering section outputs a brake light activation signal upon determining a predetermined condition has been satisfied based upon the detected vehicle traveling condition. The brake light activating section activates the brake lights without a braking operation being performed upon receiving the brake light activation signal from the automatic brake light triggering section.

An audio multimedia player has dual access modes for navigating between track selections contained in a large storage media, such as a compact disc CD-ROM having compressed audio files. The disc may includes numerous directories for organizing the audio files, but the player has insufficient display resources to show the directories themselves. In a flat file mode, all target audio file on the disc are included in a sequential numbering scheme which ignores any directory structure. In a directory mode, all directories are collapsed onto a single directory level in which subdirectories are moved up to the same top level as all other directories. The directories are sequentially numbered and then the target audio files within each directory are sequentially numbered.

Track access management for large playlists in a vehicular multimedia player

A multimedia player having a limited user interface achieves quick and easy navigation within a large playlist of stored digital audio files by employing the rotary volume control knob in a separate mode to advance or rollback sequentially through the playlist. Thus, an MP3 player can be implemented for an automotive or vehicular multimedia player without increasing the number of user control elements, such as buttons, knobs, or other switches.

Rotary control for quick playlist navigation in a vehicular multimedia player

A multimedia player has a fast seek function for navigating between track selections contained within a large playlist. By holding down a seek-up or a seek-down button, a selection identifying display scrolls through the selections in a playlist in single steps until a multiple of 10 is reached. If a minimum number of single steps (e.g., 4) have been taken, then the display begins to jump by 10's. Otherwise, single steps are taken until the next multiple of 10. Single stepping is again used when the display nears the beginning or end of the playlist.

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Westland, MI, United States of America

Jack Auflick