Suzuki Motor Corporation

Dainabot Co., Ltd.

Ryohei Matsumoto

Hidenao Suzuki

Toshiyuki Furuta

Masahiro Kato

Naoki Ozawa

Masato Ohta

Yasuhiko Yokomori

Hideo Suda

Shogo Kida

Kunio Kurata

Yoshinobu Kubo

Yoshiharu Matsuoka

A rough-terrain vehicle employs separate track drives located on opposite sides of a vehicle body, like the wheels of a car. The tractor drives can revolve the track to permit track-driven travel. The drives can also halt the tracks relative to the drives and rotated the entire track drive that supports the track in which case the track drive rotates like a wheel. The latter mode provides an ability to traverse very rough surfaces. To provide high ground clearance, the support connecting the track drive to the vehicle body is located above the axis of rotation of the track drive. Almost the entire transmission mechanism for the track drive is confined to a volume enclosed by the loop of the track protecting it. The track drive supports the track on a polar array of wheels, each located along the line that divides the track into two loops.

High ground-clearance hybrid track/wheel drive

A method and apparatus for discriminating aggregation patterns includes detection of an image of the aggregation pattern and dividing the image into a plurality of image line data using a photoelectric element. The image line data defines an image waveform and includes a maximum image value. High and low image levels are defined based on the maximum image value. These high and low image levels are used to determine first and second areas of the aggregation pattern image, which first and second areas respectively include image values at least as large as the high and low image levels. An area difference between the first and second areas and a level difference between the high and low image levels are then calculated, along with a ratio of the area difference to the level difference. The calculated area difference and ratio are then compared with a predetermined reference value to discriminate whether or not the aggregation pattern is positive.

Method and apparatus for discriminating aggregation pattern

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Kanagawa-ken, Japan

Ryohei Matsumoto