The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 24, 2001
Filed:
May. 09, 2000
Other;
Abstract
A vehicular front monitoring apparatus which can reliably recognize a road configuration ahead of an own-vehicle through simpler computation. The apparatus comprises a distance measuring unit for radiating electromagnetic waves or the likes in plural directions, and detecting distances from an own-vehicle to a plurality of objects around the own-vehicle and lateral positions of the objects relative to a running direction of the own-vehicle, thereby measuring object positional data on coordinates defined by the running direction and a transverse direction of the own-vehicle; a road curvature estimating unit for estimating a curvature of a road ahead of the own-vehicle through Hough transform of the object positional data measured by the distance measuring unit; and a vehicle's own lane determining unit for determining whether other vehicles running ahead are in the same lane as the own-vehicle or not based on the curvature of the road estimated by the road curvature estimating unit.