Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.

Kabushiki Kaisha Tokai Rika Denki Seisakusho

Toyota Motor Corporation

Masayuki Kawamoto

Takahiro Yamada

Tetsuya Hirata

Jun Koreishi

Koshi Ito

Tatsuya Morii

Kengo Matsunaga

Hiroaki Sugiyama

Daisuke Takanohashi

Yoriko Inada

Hiromitsu Uchiyama

Hironobu Kitaoka

Shojiro Takeuchi

Hiroaki Sekiyama

Steven F Kalik

Hiroko Mori

Kimitoshi Tsuzi

Jun-ichi Nakaho

An energy saving support system according to an embodiment is configured to provide a consumer, who has an electric load to which electric energy is supplied from an electric power supply system within a house, with energy consumption-related information through a photo frame or the like. The information providing apparatus is configured to acquire an acceptability level, which stepwise indicates a degree of interest of the consumer in the energy consumption-related information, and to determine the energy consumption-related information to be newly provided to the consumer based on the acceptability level.

Energy saving support system

A power supply management system according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a fee setting unit configured to set power fee unit prices (first power fee unit price and second power fee unit price) for each time slot, and a notification unit configured to notify a consumer of information on the set power fee unit prices. The first power fee unit price is a power unit price for a household electrical load, and the second power fee unit price is a power unit price in a case of using a charge/discharge device to charge a vehicle-mounted storage battery. The fee setting unit is configured to set, by predicting a load factor of a transformer, a discount rate of the second power fee unit price to become higher (second power fee unit price to become lower) as the predicted load factor becomes lower. The second power fee unit price is determined on the basis of the first power fee unit price and the discount rate.

Power supply management system

An operation management center divides an operation area in which an on-demand bus operates into a plurality of predetermined sub-areas, and searches for candidate routes on which the on-demand bus travels for each divided sub-area. The center sets one of the retrieved routes as a basic route, and sets, as adjustment time for each divided sub-area, time required when the bus passes through a location separated from the basic route. Thus, by setting such adjustment time for each sub-area, and by using the adjustment time set for each sub-area, the center can determine an operation plan that takes into account an additional request while reducing an impact on the determined operation plan.

On-demand vehicle operation management device, on-demand vehicle operation management method, and on-demand vehicle operation management system

Apparatus and methods are described for assisting a requestor to identify and reserve a resource that meets the need of the requestor's request. For example, a request can be augmented using augmentation data, such as current position and requestor preferences, and resources are located and ranked according to their match against the augmented request. A person who is the requestor may engage in another attention demanding task, such as driving a car, while resources well matched to preferences are located. Preference data may be determined from social network data, a preference file, and/or other sources.

Mobile recommendation and reservation system

A capacitive angle detector according to the present invention is capable of detecting a rotating angle with a high precision. The capacitive angle detector includes a first member, a second member and a third member. The first and second members have a plurality of electrodes thereon to form a plurality of capacitors. The electrodes on the first member and the electrodes on the second member are free from relative rotation and arranged opposite each other. The third member rotates relative to the first and second members in accordance with a rotating movement of a rotating body, thus changing capacitance values of the capacitors. Based on capacitance values of the capacitors, the capacitive angle detector detects a rotating angle of the rotating body. In this capacitive angle detector, the third member is made of a dielectric material or a conductive metal material. The third member is partially interposed between the electrodes arranged opposite each other.

Capacitive angle detector

In a damping force control system for switching over a shock absorber in the suspension of a vehicle from a low damping force operation to a high damping force operation when a vehicle height difference exceeds a determinate limit value, the shock abosrber is switched over from the low damping force operation to the high damping force operation after the lapse of a delay period so that the shock absorber is continually maintained at the high damping force operation from a time point at which the vehicle height difference generally reaches a peak amplitude of its variation for a time duration which is increased as a peak amplitude of the vehicle height difference exceeding the determinate limit value increases.

Damping force control system for shock absorber variable with amplitude

In a damping force control system for switching over a shock absorber in the suspension of a vehicle from a low damping force operation to a high damping force operation when a vehicle height difference exceeds a certain limit value, the frequency of the vehicle height difference exceeding the certain limit value is counted for each certain cycle period, and the shock absorber is controlled to provide the high damping force operation for a time duration in each cycle period, the ratio of the time duration to the cycle period being varied in accordance with the frequency so that the ratio is increased along with an increase of the frequency.

Damping force control system for shock absorber variable with frequency

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Toyota, Japan

Masayuki Kawamoto