Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Ryotaro Suzuki

Satoru Inoue

Wataru Tsujita

Yoshitsugu Sawa

Shinichi Harase

Tsutomu Asahina

Tatsuya Mitsugi

Hirokazu Shimizu

Takahisa Aoyagi

Yukio Nishimoto

Asako Omote

Mitsuaki Akaza

A parking assistance device includes a pair of left and right sonar devices provided in a vehicle, an obstacle detection controller for determining whether an obstacle present within a determination target distance range on a side of the vehicle is a wall or a curb by comparing a level value of a reflection wave received by one of the sonar devices with each of a first threshold value and a second threshold value that are different from each other, and an automatic parking controller for setting a guiding route for automatic parking depending on a determination result, and the automatic parking controller sets the guiding route requiring a large amount of steering of the vehicle in a case where the determination result indicates a curb, compared with a case where the determination result indicates a wall in the automatic parking in the form of parallel parking.

Parking assistance device

A parking assistance device includes: distance sensors for transmitting detection waves toward a side of a host vehicle while the host vehicle is traveling and receiving reflected waves of the detection waves; a reflection point calculating unit for calculating reflection points indicating positions where the detection waves have been reflected; a grouping unit for grouping the reflection points; a reference distance setting unit for setting a reference distance corresponding to a distance between a host vehicle position indicating the position of the traveling host vehicle and a reflection point group set by grouping; and an object determining unit for setting an object determining threshold value to be compared with the reference distance and determining whether an object corresponding to the reflection point group is a parked vehicle or a parking reference object by comparing the reference distance with the object determining threshold value.

A parking assistance device () is provided with distance sensors (FL,FR,RL,RR) which transmit detection waves laterally with respect to a host vehicle () while the host vehicle () travels and receive reflected waves of the detection waves, a reflection point calculating unit () which calculates a reflection point indicating a position where the detection wave is reflected, a grouping unit () which groups the reflection points, a parking space pitch calculating unit () which calculates a parking space pitch indicating a width of each parking space by using periodicity of a shape of a reflection point group set by grouping, a parking target area setting unit () which sets a parking target area which is a target of perpendicular parking by the host vehicle (), and a parking assistance controlling unit () which guides the host vehicle () to the parking target area on the basis of the parking space pitch.

A parking mode determining system includes a distance measurer to measure a distance to an obstacle on the side of a host vehicle; a host-vehicle position measurer to measure a position of the host vehicle; a reflected position calculator to calculate a reflected position of the transmission wave; a grouping unit to group a plurality of the reflected positions for each obstacle; an angle calculator to obtain an approximate line for each of two or more of the reflected positions adjacent to each other, and calculate an angle of inclination of the approximate line or an angle of inclination of a normal line of the approximate line; and a parking mode determiner to determine whether a parking mode is parallel parking, perpendicular parking, or angle parking on the basis of a distribution of a plurality of the angles of inclination.

Parking mode determining system

A notification sound control unit () of an approaching vehicle audible system (), generating a signal for a notification sound to be emitted from a sounding device () provided in an electric vehicle () in which at least part of driving force is produced by a motor to the outside of the electric vehicle (), is provided with a behavior conversion processing section () that changes through time change processing an accelerator opening degree signal () among vehicle information signals () of the electric vehicle () so as to output a processed accelerator opening degree signal and with a notification sound signal generation processing section () that changes a pitch and a volume of a sound element signal outputted from a sound element (), based on the processed accelerator opening degree signal, so as to generate a notification sound signal.

Notification sound control unit of approaching vehicle audible system

A vehicle surroundings monitoring device carries out a position mapping process of expressing a positional relationship in the detection ranges of distance sensorsfor detecting an obstacleby coordinates on a camera image captured by a camera unithaving an image capture range in the surroundings of a vehicle, derives transformation parameters used for carrying out a mapping transformation in such a way that the obstacle detected by the distance sensorsis placed at a predetermined position on the camera image on which the position mapping process has been carried out, and carries out an image transformation on the camera image by using the transformation parameters in such a way that the obstacle is placed at the predetermined position.

Vehicle surroundings monitoring device

Because a vehicle rear view monitoring device changes the detection threshold level of each of distance sensors-to-to change horizontal and vertical detection areas and a bearing resolution, determines the display position of an obstacle markfrom the distances to an obstacledetected by the plurality of distance sensors-to-, and amplitude information about the amplitude of a reflected wave from the obstacle, and overlays the obstacle markon the obstacleby using an overlay unit, the vehicle rear view monitoring device improves the degree of positional precision of the overlay of the obstacle mark on the obstacle displayed on a captured image.

Vehicle rear view monitoring device

An obstacle detection device includes one or more emitter ultrasonic sensors, each emitting an ultrasonic wave toward an obstacle, and one or more detection ultrasonic sensors for reception, each detecting a reflected wave from the obstacle. A control unit drives a specific one of the emitter ultrasonic sensors to cause it to emit an ultrasonic wave, stops the emission of the ultrasonic wave by the specific emitter ultrasonic sensor at the time that one of the detection ultrasonic sensors detects a reflected wave from the obstacle, and carries out detection of the obstacle and measurement of the distance to the obstacle from the time that the control unit stops the emission of the ultrasonic wave by the emitter ultrasonic sensor and the time that the reflected wave cannot be detected anymore.

Obstacle detection device

An obstacle detection device controls distance sensors to cause the distance sensors to transmit a transmission wave during a fixed time period, measures a first time which has elapsed from a time at which the transmission starts to a time at which a reflected wave is detected, and a second time which has elapsed a time at which the above-mentioned transmission is stopped to a time at which the reflected wave disappears, and determines that an obstacle exists when a time difference between the above-mentioned first time and the above-mentioned second time is equal to or shorter than a predetermined allowed time. Therefore, the obstacle detection device can reduce the time required for the determination to at least one-half that provided by a related art technique, and improves the accuracy of the detection of an object moving at a relatively high speed.

A parking support device is provided for extracting detection point data corresponding to a corner portion of a parked vehiclefrom detection point data showing a series of detection points at each of which the distance to the parked vehicleis detected, performing a noise component removing process and a data complementing process using a curve approximation of the series of detection points on the extracted detection point data, estimating reflection points of a detection wave in the corner portion from the detection point data and sensor position data showing a moving path of a distance sensor, and measuring the length of a parking space adjacent to the parked vehicleaccording to a corner position which is determined from the positions of the estimated reflection points to determine if a vehiclecan be parked in the parking space.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Ryotaro Suzuki