Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Masaki Kanatani

Masaaki Tabata

Hideki Ohashi

Toshio Onuma

Takenari Yamaguchi

Atsushi Mizuta

Koutaro Okimura

Atsushi Ogawa

Shoichi Shono

Shingo Urababa

Hideki Kusunoki

Kenji Harada

Motohiko Honma

Yoshiyuki Hashimoto

Atushi Sato

Kazuyuki Mizuno

Hidenori Kajino

Takashi Doi

Kouichi Morita

A height controlling apparatus for controlling at least one actual height as a relative position of (a) a body of a vehicle and (b) at least one wheel of the vehicle relative to each other, the apparatus including at least one height controlling actuator which changes the at least one actual height; and an actuator control device which controls the at least one height controlling actuator so that the at least one actual height approaches at least one target height. The actuator control device includes a possibility detecting device which detects, before an absolute value of a difference of the at least one target height and the at least one actual height exceeds a reference value, whether there is a possibility that an object may be present in a direction in which the body is moved to change the at least one actual height, and a movement restraining portion which controls, when the possibility detecting device detects that there is the possibility, the at least one height controlling actuator to restrain a movement of the body in the direction.

Height controlling apparatus

A vehicle suspension system for a vehicle, including: (a) a plurality of suspension cylinders each disposed between a chassis-side member and a corresponding one of a plurality of wheel-side members; (b) a controller cylinder including a housing and at least one piston slidably mounted in the housing, such that the housing and the at least one piston cooperate to define a plurality of chambers each having a volume that is variable upon slide movement of the at least one piston relative to the housing; (c) individual conduits each communicating a corresponding one of the plurality of chambers of the controller cylinder and a chamber of a corresponding one of the plurality of suspension cylinders; and (d) a suspension-cylinder operation facilitator operable to facilitate an operation of each of the plurality of suspension cylinders for permitting displacement of each of the plurality of wheel-side members relative to the chassis-side member after the at least one piston of the controller cylinder has reached its stroke end.

Vehicle suspension system

A tire-state obtaining apparatus operable to detect the states of tires of wheels and including (a) wheel-side devices each including a transmitter device (), and (b) a body-side device including a receiver device operable to receive tire information from the wheel-side devices, wherein the positions of the wheels from which sets of the tire information have been transmitted are determined on the basis of the condition in which the receiver device receives the tire information. The receiver device includes a plurality of antennas oriented to receive the tire information from the respective wheel-side devices, and the wheel corresponding to the antenna having the highest intensity of reception of the tire information can be determined as the wheel from which the tire information has been transmitted, so that the antennas need not be located near the respective wheels, to identify the wheels.

Tire-state obtaining apparatus

A vehicle height adjust control apparatus and method adjusts an actual vehicle height to a target vehicle height using a microcomputer that controls an electric motor, leveling valves and an accumulator valve on the basis of the actual vehicle height detected by vehicle height sensors, so as to eliminate any deviation of the actual vehicle height from the target vehicle height. If a hydraulic fluid temperature detected by a fluid temperature sensor is very low or very high, the microcomputer suspends the vehicle height adjusting control and the supply of hydraulic fluid to an accumulator by stopping the operation of the electric motor and a hydraulic pump and/or switching the valves to a closed state. The suspending control thereby prevents very high and low viscosities of the hydraulic fluid, or very low and high fluidities thereof, which prevent an undesirable increase of the load on the hydraulic pump and an undesirable decrease of the ejecting performance thereof.

Vehicle height adjust control apparatus and method

Growing community of inventors

Okazaki, Japan

Masaki Kanatani