Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Hitachi Cable, Inc.

Denso Corporation

Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd.

Pacific Industrial Company, Ltd.

Yukio Nakagawa

Motomi Iyoda

Hiroyuki Takahashi

Shigeyuki Suzuki

Hajime Kitte

Takeki Hayashi

Shigenori Kobayashi

Yasuyuki Hishida

Takahiro Saito

Kazuyuki Yoshiyama

Shinji Mori

Akira Suzuki

Tomiya Abe

Sotaro Narita

Masashi Aoki

Hitoshi Yuasa

Toshikatsu Togawa

Koji Ohtaka

Shuji Masuda

Toshinobu Tsuboi

Koichi Fukui

A vehicle substructure includes a first undercover disposed in a lower portion of a vehicle and a second undercover disposed side by side with the first undercover in the lower portion of the vehicle. The second undercover is fastened to a skeleton member of the vehicle via a fastening bolt inserted into a bolt hole provided in the second undercover. A part of the first undercover is disposed below the second undercover to cover the fastening bolt fastening the second undercover from below the vehicle.

Vehicle substructure

A vehicle pop-up hood apparatus is provided that includes: an arm member, whose proximal end portion is connected to a body of a vehicle so as to be pivotable about an axis extending in the vehicle width direction; a first connection section by which a hood of the vehicle is connected to a tip portion of the arm member, and that allows the hood to pivot relative to the arm member about an axis extending in the vehicle width direction; a second connection section that connects the hood to the arm member to prevent the hood from pivoting relative to the arm member about the first connection section; and an actuator that generates a lifting force that lifts the hood relative to the body and acts in a direction such that the connection between the hood and the arm member by means of the second connection section is broken.

Vehicle pop-up hood apparatus

In a vehicle pop-up hood apparatus in which a rod is extended and a hood is pushed up by the operation of an actuator at a time of collision with a collision body, collision energy is absorbed with high efficiency when a collision load of a predetermined value or greater is input to an area near a hood pushed up position. Actuator () operates such that rod () moves in an axial direction toward a hood upper side, pushes up a rear edge side of hood rocker () and holds it at that position and, in that state, when a collision load of a predetermined value or greater acts from a hood upper side to near the pushed up position of the hood, push portion () slides along pushed up surface () of hinge arm () towards a vehicle rear side, and rod () is made to bend in conjunction therewith.

Vehicle pop up hood apparatus

The present invention provides a hood impact absorbing apparatus capable of further mitigating an impact that a collision body receives from a hood than ever, wherein a push-up rod pushes up the rear end of a hood at the time of a collision of a vehicle, and when a collision body is battered against the top surface of the hood in this state, the rear end of the hood descends and the distal end of the push-up rod slidingly contacts and moves a rear-side flat portion and an arm intermediate curved portion in the rear end of the hood, and herein, a slide contact angle (&#x3b8;) in the arm intermediate curved portion is larger than a slide contact angle (&#x3b8;) in the rear end of the rear-side flat portion, thereby, during a process in which the rear end of the hood descends, peaks at which an absorbing amount of impact energy becomes large can be provided at least twice, and as a result, the impact can be mitigated further than ever.

Hood impact absorbing apparatus

An impulse sensor having: a long elastic structure formed of a material to be deformed according to an impulse; a cable insertion hole formed in the elastic structure; and a cable inserted through the cable insertion hole, the cable being operable to cause a variation in propagation energy due to its deformation. A distance from a central line of the cable to an outer surface of the elastic structure is varied in a longitudinal direction of the elastic structure.

Impulse sensor

An optical fiber sensor can be interposed between a bumper reinforcement and a load transmitting plate to extend in the direction of width of a vehicle along with the bumper reinforcement. In this case, when a change does not occur substantially in an immediately previous predetermined period in an output voltage of a light emission amount of the optical fiber sensor, a feedback control is performed in such a way that the change becomes a level of zero of the output voltage of the optical fiber sensor. In contrast, when a change in the output voltage is not substantially zero, the immediately previous state of emission of light is maintained. Accordingly, it is possible to effectively compensate a zero point shift caused by a temperature change or/and an aging degradation of the optical fiber sensor.

Collision detecting apparatus for vehicle

An optical fiber sensor in which the insertion efficiency of a plastic fiber is improved, the potential danger of rupture of a mold member is decreased, the operation of the sensor in a low load area and the linearity of output of the sensor are improved. Plastic fiber for detection is inserted in insertion hole of molded member, and filler is filled in a gap between the plastic fiber for detection and the molded member.

Optical fiber sensor, manufacturing method thereof, and collision detection device

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Toyota, Japan

Yukio Nakagawa