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:
Mar. 28, 2006
Filed:
Jan. 09, 2002
Kazuto Kokuryo, Otsu, JP;
Shinji Nagao, Otsu, JP;
Kazuto Kokuryo, Otsu, JP;
Shinji Nagao, Otsu, JP;
Niles Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
In a rain sensing device, a sensing device that can estimate the size of raindrops or the like without a large amount of hardware resources, and its sensing method, and a wiper controlling apparatus using the same can be provided. In a sensing device, light emitted from a light-emitting member is introduced to a transparent plate, reflected by a sensing surface of the transparent plate and then received by a photo-detector, thereby detecting a condition of the sensing surface. The sensing device includes a sampling part for sampling signals from the photo-detector, a compression part for compressing signals in a sequence of the sampled signals when they continue within a single segment, where a plurality of the segments defined by a plurality of predetermined values are set with respect to an input signal, a calculation part for calculating a compressibility from the number of the sampled signals to be compressed by the compression part and the number of the sampled signals that have been compressed thereby, and a judging part for judging the condition of the sensing surface based on the compressibility.