Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Fdk Corporation

Fujitsu Corporation

Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Kohoku Kogyo Co., Ltd.

Yuko Ota

Masahiko Ikawa

Takashi Irie

Hidenori Nakada

Hiroaki Ono

Yuji Igarashi

Keisuke Ikeda

Ryusuke Kinoshita

Nobuhiro Fukushima

Takashi Kato

Yoshitsugu Sawa

Hirotaka Kawai

Shigeki Morita

Kenji Sahara

Isao Kojima

Hiroyuki Kumazawa

Hiroki Konaka

Shohei Abe

Kazushi Shirasawa

Tsugio Tokumasu

Norihiro Nishiuma

Taro Nakamura

Ikuo Maeda

Shusuke Wada

Yasuko Yamazaki

A vehicle air-conditioning system capable of reducing energy consumed during traveling while preventing a significant uncomfortable feeling of a user. An inside-vehicle environment predicting unit calculates, by using inside-vehicle sensor information and outside-vehicle sensor information being output from an environmental sensor device and a predicted travel time acquired by a predicted travel information acquisition unit, at least one predicted environmental characteristic which is an environmental characteristic inside a vehicle after a predicted travel time on an assumption that an air-conditioning device is operated in each of at least one candidate mode which has lower intensity than intensity of a selection mode among a plurality of operation modes. A mode controller resets the selection mode to one of the at least one candidate mode, in which the predicted environmental characteristic being within the allowable range is calculated by the inside-vehicle environment predicting unit.

Vehicle air-conditioning system

It is an object of the present invention to provide a destination estimating system and a destination estimating method capable of estimating a destination with a high degree of accuracy even when a user uses a detour or stops off somewhere. The destination estimating system of the present invention includes: obtaining a traveling area and a traveling link of a moving body; obtaining, as a traveling history, an area history for storing, for each area, information of a past destination to which the moving body has traveled via the area previously and a link history for storing, for each link, information of a past destination to which the moving body has traveled via the link previously; estimating, based on the traveling area and the area history, a value regarding a probability of traveling to the past destination as an area estimation value; estimating, based on the traveling link and the link history, a value regarding a probability of traveling to the past destination as a link estimation value; and estimating the destination from the past destination based on the area estimation value and the link estimation value.

Destination estimating system and destination estimating method

A variable optical attenuator in which a polarization beam splitter splits a beam incoming from the front into two linearly-polarized beams perpendicular to each other and separately outputs them to the back along first and second light paths. A Faraday rotator rotates a polarization plane of the two incoming linearly-polarized beams to an arbitrary angle by controlling a magnetic field to be applied to a Faraday element by a magnetism applying means and outputs them to the back. First and second analyzers arranged in the first and the second light paths and parallelly arranged perpendicular to these light paths are arranged in that order. The two analyzers have optical axes perpendicular to each other so that the optical axes are in the same direction as that of the polarization plane of the two linearly-polarized beams output from the polarization beam splitter.

Variable optical attenuator

An in-vehicle information processing device capable of efficiently processing information by extracting an event that exists outside of a travel route but can possibly reach the travel route. The in-vehicle information processing device includes a map database, a traffic information database, a vehicle position determination mechanism, a driving assist information extraction mechanism for extracting driving assist information, and a driving assist information database for storing the driving assist information. An aid information extraction mechanism includes a travel route determination mechanism for determining a vehicle travel route based on a vehicle position. The driving assist information extraction mechanism extracts the driving assist information from map information and traffic information on the travel route.

In-vehicle information processing device and driving assist device

A stopping vehicle estimating unit estimates one of a number of stopping vehicles and a length of a stopping vehicle line of different vehicles that are stopping at a traffic light along an estimated driving route ahead of the own vehicle closer to the traffic light than the own vehicle, based on a position information of a site at which a traffic light is provided, an own vehicle position, an own vehicle speed, and traffic information. A passable time zone estimating unit estimates a passable time zone during which the own vehicle is able to pass by the traffic light, based on the one of the number of stopping vehicles and the length of the stopping vehicle line that have been estimated by the stopping vehicle estimating unit, and on schedule information.

Drive assistance device

A travel interval division part and a low fuel consumption travel pattern generation part are included, the travel interval division part dividing, based on a reference travel pattern indicating a speed and a travel time period in a case where a vehicle travels without consideration of energy consumption and based on travel route information indicating a travel route that the vehicle travels, the travel route into a plurality of travel intervals at a plurality of reference points, the low fuel consumption travel pattern generation part determining a low fuel consumption travel pattern in which a travel time period of each travel interval falls within a predetermined range of a travel time period of each travel interval of the reference travel pattern and a cumulative speed increase amount in each travel interval is smaller than that of the reference travel pattern.

Travel pattern generation device

An input/output port, a birefringent element, variable polarization rotator, and a reflector are arranged along an optical axis in the order named. The variable polarization rotator includes permanent magnets for applying a fixed magnetic field to a Faraday rotator in an in-plane direction to magnetically saturate the Faraday rotator and a solenoid coil for applying a variable magnetic field to the Faraday rotator in a direction of the optical axis. A fixed magnetic field is applied in the &#x3c;211&#x3e; direction, in which the Faraday rotator is likely to be magnetically saturated. The Faraday rotator can be saturated with a low magnetic field of about 100 Oe. The permanent magnets may employ ferrite permanent magnets, which have weak magnetic forces. A variable magnetic field may also be reduced. Therefore, an air-core coil can be used.

Reflection type variable optical attenuator

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming unit that forms an image on a sheet of recording medium, a sheet feed tray selecting unit, a medium size selecting unit that selects a first medium size, a medium type selecting unit that selects a medium type. A determining unit determines operation of the image forming unit based on a search result of a first sheet feed tray corresponding to the first medium size selected by the medium size selecting unit, a search result of a second sheet feed tray corresponding to the medium type selected by the medium type selecting unit, a selected tray selected by the sheet feed tray selecting unit, and resetting values specified for the operation of the image forming unit.

Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and computer program product

A low-cost compact optical attenuator structure has an input port and an output port for optical signals arranged side by side; a reflecting member arranged to face both ports to reverse light from the input side on an optical path folded 180&#xb0;; a birefringence crystal splits incident light into two polarization components, a converging lens converges the incident light, a fixed Faraday rotator having a variable rotation angle arranged in that order in the optical path. The partial reflecting member that transmits a portion of incident light to the rear side thereof, an optical sensor at the rear side of the reflecting member, optical guide means guide only the transmitted light from the input port side to the optical sensor, and optical detection signals of the optical sensor are used as optical input monitoring signals.

Optical attenuator

A variable optical filter comprises a first polarizer, a first phase difference element operable to generate a phase difference, a variable Faraday rotator operable to impart a variable Faraday rotation, a second phase difference element operable to generate a phase difference, and a second polarizer, wherein said polarizers, said variable Faraday rotator, and said phase difference elements are arranged in the mentioned order along the optical axis, and wherein when the angles formed by the optic axes of said first and second phase difference elements and the transmitted polarization azimuth of the first polarizer are assumed respectively to be &#x3c6;and &#x3c6;, these &#x3c6;and &#x3c6;are set to different angles.

Variable optical filter

A variable optical attenuator is disclosed which comprises a plane-parallel birefringent element for separation/synthesis which separates light beams having orthogonal polarization directions on the same optical path, the birefringent element synthesizing light beams on different optical paths; a light converging lens disposed adjacent to the birefringent element for separation/synthesis; a reflecting mirror disposed at a focal point of the lens opposite to the birefringent element for separation/synthesis with respect to the lens; a variable polarization rotating device; and an input port and an output port which are disposed at the end of the birefringent element for separation/synthesis; the variable polarization rotating device being disposed at any position between the birefringent element for separation/synthesis and the reflecting mirror, the variable polarization rotating device controlling the rotational angle of the polarization direction of incident light beams from the input port, to thereby control the amount of reflected output light to the output port.

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Tokyo, Japan

Yuko Ota