Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd.

Kazutoshi Tsuchiya

Hiroshi Sakamoto

Masato Imai

Takehito Ogata

Takaomi Nishigaito

Tatsuya Ochi

Masao Sakata

Masahiro Yatsu

Sumito Tobe

Mikio Ueyama

Akira Tsubota

Masafumi Naito

An external environment recognition device for a vehicle and a vehicle system capable of assuring safety and reducing the processing load in a compatible manner are provided. An external environment recognition devicefor a vehicle includes: first collision determination meansfor computing a risk of collision of a host vehicle with a detected object in front of the host vehicle on the basis of information of a predicted course of the host vehicle and the detected object; and second collision determination meansfor determining whether the detected object enters the predicted course from the outside of the predicted course or not. This device further includes object selection meansfor selecting the detected object having a risk at least a first threshold and the detected object determined to enter the predicted course as selection candidate objects from among the detected objects, and for selecting the selection candidate object having a minimum relative distance to the host vehicle as a pedestrian determination request object from among the selected selection candidate objects. This device further includes pedestrian determination meansfor determining whether the selected pedestrian determination request object is a pedestrian or not using image information.

External environment recognition device for vehicle and vehicle system using same

The present invention provides an obstacle detection device that enables stable obstacle detection with less misdetections even when a bright section and a dark section are present in an obstacle and a continuous contour of the obstacle is present across the bright section and the dark section. The obstacle detection device includes a processed image generating unit that generates a processed image for detecting an obstacle from a picked-up image, a small region dividing unit that divides the processed image into plural small regions, an edge threshold setting unit that sets an edge threshold for each of the small regions from pixel values of the plural small regions and the processed image, an edge extracting unit that calculates a gray gradient value of each of the small regions from the plural small regions and the processed image and generates, using the edge threshold for the small region corresponding to the calculated gray gradient value, an edge image and a gradient direction image, and an obstacle recognizing unit that determines presence or absence of an obstacle from the edge image in a matching determination region set in the edge image and the gradient direction image corresponding to the edge image. The small region dividing unit divides the processed image into the plural small regions on the basis of an illumination state on the outside of the own vehicle.

Obstacle detection device

A vehicle speed control system includes a road shape recognition unit which recognizes a road shape, a target speed setting unit which sets a target speed according to the road shape, a speed control unit which controls the host vehicle's speed according to the target speed, a parameter detecting unit which detects at least one of parameters representing the driver's steering rotation, a yaw rate of the host vehicle, and a lateral acceleration of the host vehicle, and a first acceleration determining unit which, after the speed control unit has decelerated, determines whether or not to accelerate the host vehicle according to reference parameters based on a road shape and the host vehicle's speed and parameters detected by the parameter detecting unit, wherein if the first acceleration determining unit has determined to accelerate, the target speed setting unit sets a target speed of the host vehicle according to a predetermined acceleration.

Vehicle speed control system

This invention provides a vehicle cruise control system which, during recognition of a shape of a road extending in a frontward direction of host vehicle, can calculate the road shape rapidly and accurately from a positional relationship with respect to the host vehicle. The system includes at least: a position change detector that detects, from information on the road existing in the frontward direction of the vehicle, a horizontal distance from a line segment orthogonal to a traveling direction vector of the vehicle, to a centerline of the road, the detection being conducted at a plurality of measuring points in an extending direction of the traveling direction vector; a road shape recognizer that identifies the shape of the road from data relating to linearity of changes in each of the horizontal distances, the linearity data being obtained by the position change detector; and a cruise controller that controls traveling of the vehicle according to results of the identification by the road shape recognizer.

Cruise control system for a vehicle

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Hitachinaka, Japan

Kazutoshi Tsuchiya