Denso Corporation

Nippondenso Co., Ltd.

Hokkaido University

Minoru Okada

Osamu Katayama

Hiroshi Uesugi

Takafumi Ito

Takahiro Iwamura

Hiroaki Tanaka

Tadashi Kamada

Keisuke Hachisuka

Takashi Omori

Tetsuo Hirano

Yoji Morishita

Kentaro Mizutani

A lock release apparatus in a vehicle includes a vehicle unit and a portable device, for an exchange of the first and second reference signals transmitted therebetween from the portable device through human body of the driver toward the right and left hands of the driver onto the first and second interfaces. The signals received by the interfaces are used to set the first and second determination conditions. At a time of a shift lever operation, an interface on a shift lever is used to receive the first determination signal for determining the first determination condition, together with the second determination signal from the other interface for releasing the lock of the shift lever.

Lock release apparatus

A dynamic contour extracting means detects, using a dynamic contour extraction method generally known as SNAKE, a contour of a recognition object included on an image by the following steps: a curve with control points is disposed in an image; an internal energy Eint indicating smoothness of the curve, an image energy Eimage, and an external energy Eext are summed up; and the curve is modified so that the summed total energy becomes the minimum. Here, a template is stored for including disposition information of primary control points that are bound to be moved only in a vertical or horizontal direction based on a road shape. The dynamic contour extracting means moves the primary control points based on the template. The primary control points can be rapidly moved owing to their limited movement direction.

Road position detection

A driver's gaze distribution is detected. Based on the detected distribution, an image corresponding to a driver's visual-field is extracted from images photographed by a front monitor camera and is accumulated. A first driver's gaze probability distribution necessary for steering operation is computed based on the accumulated images, and a second driver's gaze probability distribution that is expected is computed based on visual characteristics within the images. An ideal gaze probability distribution is obtained by adding up the first and the second probability distributions. Presence of a risk is determined when the difference between the driver's gaze and the ideal gaze probability distribution becomes a given threshold. A windshield display or a speaker outputs the determined result.

Driving assistance system

An image processing apparatus draws an image, stores the drawn image in a memory, reads image data from the memory along a raster direction, and executes a processing operation required for a display with respect to the read image data to output the processed image data to a display device. A display processing unit executes a processing operation including a coordinate calculation with respect to the image data read out along the raster direction. As a result, the image can be formed at high speed even under transition state of displayed images.

Image processing apparatus having processing operation by coordinate calculation

An image data compressing apparatus comprises a color selecting unit, a data separating unit and a data compressing unit. The selecting unit selects an arbitrary color contained in an original map image. The separating unit separates the original image data into a modified color data and a selected position data. The compressing unit compresses these data separately from each other to improve data compression efficiency. The modified color data may be data in which a color of a background portion is made equal to a color of a road, and the background color may be a color which is most popularly used.

Image data compressing method and apparatus which compress image data separately by modifying color

A display panel having plural capacitive elements such as electroluminescent elements is driven by an integrated circuit connected between the display panel and a power source. A pair of power transistors such as MOSFETs is connected between the power source and the integrated circuit. The capacitive elements are selectively charged and discharged by operating switching elements in the integrated circuit. The pair of transistors disposed separately from the integrated circuit is turned on or off after the switching elements in the integrated circuit are closed, so that the switching loss only occurs in the transistors outside the integrated circuit, thereby suppressing temperature rise in the integrated circuit. A pair of resistors may be used in place of the transistors to divide a voltage supplied to the capacitive elements between the resistors and the integrated driver circuit. A step-recycle circuit including a condenser for recycling a part of energy stored in the capacitive elements may be further connected between the power source and the pair of transistors, to further reduce power consumption in the integrated circuit.

Driver circuit for capacitive display elements

A device selectively supplying a high voltage and a ground level voltage to electrodes of an electroluminescent display panel. The voltage supply device includes a first and a second transistor connected in series, and outputs the high voltage upon turning on the first switching transistor and the ground level voltage upon turning on the second switching transistor. The device includes a circuit for selecting either an operation mode under which the device is normally operated with the high voltage or a test mode under which the device is tested under a low test voltage. The mode selection is performed by an external signal supplied to the device. Under the test mode, the switching transistors are turned on with a low gate voltage by operation of a circuit built in the device. Accordingly, the voltage supply device normally operated under the high voltage is easily tested under the low test voltage.

Voltage supply device having self-testing circuit

When display data for both odd-numbered and even-numbered scan electrodes in an electroluminescent display are both actuating data, the brightness of electroluminescent elements connected to the odd-numbered electrode is adjusted by adjusting the timing for starting the application of the actuating voltage and the brightness of electroluminescent elements connected to the even-numbered electrode is adjusted by adjusting the timing for terminating the application of the actuating voltage. Moreover, electric charge in the EL elements is retained by maintaining the application of the actuating voltages during scanning operations.

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Nagoya, Japan

Osamu Katayama