Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Denso Corporation

Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.

Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Denso Corpora Tion

Naohide Uchida

Hiroaki Ito

Hirotake Ishigami

Takeshi Yamakawa

Ken Tanabe

Debasish Banerjee

Songtao Wu

Hidetaka Asano

Toshihiko Terada

Masaki Kuwahara

Tatsuya Shiraishi

Takeshi Nanami

Hiroki Goto

Masakazu Nishijima

Noriaki Shirai

Kagehiro Nagao

Shoichi Hayasaka

Hideo Fukamachi

Osamu Komeda

Jun Kishiwada

Yoshihisa Serizawa

Fumio Sugaya

Masaki Ikai

Yasuo Uehara

Kazuhiro Miyazato

Hideaki Sawada

Kazuki Hiramoto

Masamu Chiba

A discrete metallic particle having a metallic material, and a coating covering at least a portion of the metallic component. The discrete metallic particle has a thickness from 50 nm to 1000 nm, and the discrete metallic particle has a skin depth δ of greater than or equal to 1.0 μm in a frequency range from 20-40 GHz. The skin depth δ is calculated by: Where δ is skin depth in meters (m); ρ is resistivity in ohm meter (Ω·m); f is frequency of an electromagnetic radiation in hertz (Hz); μis permeability; and μis relative permeability of the metallic material.

Coated discrete metallic particles and multilayer structures comprising reflective core layers

An on-board sensor system includes: a first sensor configured to detect a situation around a vehicle; a second sensor having a higher angular resolution than the first sensor; an acquisition unit configured to acquire a detection result of the first sensor; and a range decision unit configured to decide, based on the detection result, an observation range to be observed by the second sensor around the vehicle.

On-board sensor system

A multilayer thin film that reflects an omnidirectional structural color having a reflective core layer comprising a metallic material, a second layer extending across the reflective core layer, a third layer extending across the second layer, and an outer layer extending across the third layer. The multilayer thin film reflects a single narrow band of visible light that is less than 30&#xb0; measured in Lab color space when viewed from angles between 0&#xb0; and 45&#xb0;, and the reflective core layer has a skin depth &#x3b4; of greater than or equal to 1.0 &#x3bc;m in a frequency range from 20-40 GHz, as calculated by: &#x3b4; is skin depth in meters (m); &#x3c1; is resistivity in ohm meter (&#x3a9;&#xb7;m); f is frequency of an electromagnetic radiation in hertz (Hz); &#x3bc;is permeability; and &#x3bc;is relative permeability of the metallic material.

Multilayer structures comprising reflective core layers

A discrete metallic particle having a metallic material, and a coating covering at least a portion of the metallic component. The discrete metallic particle has a thickness from 50 nm to 1000 nm, and the discrete metallic particle has a skin depth &#x3b4; of greater than or equal to 1.0 &#x3bc;m in a frequency range from 20-40 GHz. The skin depth &#x3b4; is calculated by: Where &#x3b4; is skin depth in meters (m); &#x3c1; is resistivity in ohm meter (&#x3a9;&#xb7;m); f is frequency of an electromagnetic radiation in hertz (Hz); &#x3bc;is permeability; and &#x3bc;is relative permeability of the metallic material.

A new paint which makes it possible for a coating film to have both brightness and radiotransparency is demanded. The paint includes a flake, wherein the flake has a sea-island structure of including a plurality of island phases which are formed of metal, and a sea phase that is formed of resin or DLC, the sea phase linking the island phases to each other.

Paint, method for producing paint, coated component and method for producing coated component

A metallic component including a metallic material and having a skin depth &#x3b4; of greater than or equal to 1.0 &#x3bc;m in a frequency range from 20-40 GHz, as calculated by: In this equation, &#x3b4; is skin depth in meters (m); &#x3c1; is resistivity in ohm meter (&#x3a9;&#xb7;m); f is frequency of an electromagnetic radiation in hertz (Hz); &#x3bc;is permeability; and &#x3bc;is relative permeability of the metallic material. The metallic component may be a discrete metallic particle or a layer in a multilayer thin film.

Discrete metallic particles and multilayer structures comprising reflective core layers

A metallic component including NiCr and having a skin depth &#x3b4; of greater than or equal to 1.0 &#x3bc;m in a frequency range from 20-40 GHz, as calculated by:  In this equation, &#x3b4; is skin depth in meters (m); &#x3c1; is resistivity in ohm meter (&#x2229;&#xb7;m); f is frequency of an electromagnetic radiation in hertz (Hz); &#x3bc;is permeability; and &#x3bc;is relative permeability of the NiCr metallic material. The metallic component may be a discrete metallic particle or a layer in a multilayer thin film.

Nickel-chromium particles and multilayer structures comprising nickel chromium core layers

A road surface detecting apparatus comprises a camera sensorfor taking images of a region in front of a vehicle, and an electronic control unit (ECU) configured to: calculate, based on a taken image, parallax information including a parallax of each pixel composing the taken image; extract a pixel corresponding to a road surface from the taken image; acquire, based on information of the extracted pixel, information-indicating-a-road-surface; calculate, based on the information-indicating-a-road-surface, a road surface gradient formula by approximating a gradient of the road surface by a quadratic function; determine whether or not an absolute value of a coefficient of a quadratic term of this formula is greater than a coefficient threshold; and invalidate the information-indicating-a-road-surface when the absolute value is determined to be greater than the threshold.

Road surface detecting apparatus

A target object estimating apparatus comprises parallax information calculating means for calculating parallax information including a parallax between corresponding pixels of taken images taken at a same computation timing, road surface region detecting means for detecting a road surface region in the taken image based on the parallax information, road surface region determining means for determining whether or not each pixel in the taken image corresponds to the road surface region, transition information calculating means for calculating transition information including a change amount of a position of each pixel, using temporally sequential taken images, and estimated value calculating means for estimating a position and a speed of a target object by calculating, based on the parallax/transition information, estimated values of the position and the speed of each pixel. The estimated value calculating means does not calculate the estimated values for a pixel determined to correspond to the road surface region.

Target object estimating apparatus

A vicinity supervising device includes an image capturing unit that captures a plurality of images in which an object is simultaneously captured from different locations; a matching processing unit that calculates a parallax point and a reliability point, the parallax point being the number of pixel regions from which a parallax is calculated among a plurality of pixel regions divided by the plurality of images, and the reliability point being the number of pixel regions having high recognition reliability among the plurality of pixel regions; and an evaluation unit that evaluates, based on the parallax point and the reliability point, an imaging environment where the plurality of images are captured.

Vicinity supervising device and method for supervising vicinity of vehicle

In an apparatus for monitoring surroundings of a vehicle based on a plurality of images captured by a plurality of imagers through a windshield of the vehicle, an image acquirer is configured to acquire the plurality of images captured by the plurality of imagers, and a distortion corrector is configured to correct the plurality of images based on an optical distortion distribution of the windshield.

Apparatus for monitoring surroundings of vehicle and method of calibrating the same

In an apparatus for monitoring surroundings of a vehicle carrying the apparatus, a corresponding-point displacement calculator sets a search region for corresponding points in a plurality of images of an object captured simultaneously from different positions and calculate a displacement value between the corresponding points. A search region modifier modifies the search region if a number of corresponding-point displacement values acquired by the corresponding-point displacement calculator within a predetermined period of time is less than a predetermined threshold. An image displacement calculator calculates an image displacement value that is an amount of displacement between the plurality of images based on the corresponding-point displacement values acquired within the predetermined period of time if the number of corresponding-point displacement values acquired by the corresponding-point displacement calculator within the predetermined period of time is equal to or greater than the predetermined threshold. A displacement corrector corrects for an image displacement based on the image displacement value.

Apparatus and method for monitoring surroundings of vehicle

In a monitoring apparatus, an optical flow calculator calculates an optical flow for each of selected pixel regions included in at least one pixel region group of an image. The optical flow for each of the selected pixel regions includes information about a direction and amount of movement of a corresponding part of the at least one target object. An adjuster calculates the sum of areas of all the pixel regions included in the at least one pixel region group of the image, and adjusts a selected number of the optical flows to be matched with the at least one pixel region group as a function of the calculated sum of the areas of all the pixel regions included in the at least one pixel region group.

Method and apparatus for monitoring region around vehicle

An apparatus comprises three-dimensional object detecting means for detecting a three-dimensional object in a taken image, temporarily determining means for calculating, based on parallax information, a lower end height from a road surface to a lower end of the object, for temporarily determining that the object is a ground-contacting object when the lower end height is less than or equal to a threshold, and for temporarily determining that the object is a floating object when the lower end height exceeds the threshold, and finally determining means for finally determining whether the object is a ground-contacting object or a floating object. The finally determining means finally determines that the object is a ground-contacting object at the current computation timing when the object is determined to be a ground-contacting object in at least one of the temporary determination at the current computation timing and the final determination at the previous computation timing.

Three-dimensional object ground-contact determining apparatus

An apparatus for supervising a vicinity of a vehicle includes: an image capturing unit that captures a plurality of images in which an object is simultaneously captured from different locations; a parallax calculation unit that performs a sub pixel estimation based on the plurality of images to calculate a parallax value; a parallax offset calculation unit that calculates a parallax offset value based on the parallax value under a condition where a decimal part S of the parallax value is within a predetermined range; and a parallax correction unit that corrects the parallax value using the parallax offset value.

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Numazu, Japan

Naohide Uchida