US 2008/0288152 A1Published application

Inter-vehicle distance control apparatus and method for controlling inter-vehicle distance

AssigneeDenso Corporation

InventorsKazuyoshi Isaji, Naohiko Tsuru

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Abstract

An inter-vehicle distance control apparatus is provided to provide comfortable acceleration feeling to a driver of a vehicle in various situations. The inter-vehicle distance control apparatus is configured to perform an acceleration control operation when a correction distance condition evaluation index at a present time, which takes into account a velocity of a forward object, is smaller than a threshold given by a judgment equation. The inter-vehicle distance control apparatus is configured to perform the acceleration control operation to accelerate the vehicle at a target acceleration, which is calculated from an actual relative velocity and a target relative velocity corresponding to the threshold given by the judgment equation.

Claims4

Dependent claims

An inter-vehicle distance control apparatus comprising:

a distance detection unit configured to detect a distance between a subject vehicle and a forward object existing forward of the subject vehicle;
a relative velocity detection unit configured to detect a relative velocity of the subject vehicle with respect to the forward object;
an evaluation index calculation unit configured to calculate a correction distance condition evaluation index representing a distance condition between the subject vehicle and the forward object, wherein the distance condition takes into account a velocity of the forward object, the correction distance condition evaluation index becomes larger as the relative speed of the subject vehicle with respect to the forward object is larger, and a rate of an increase in the correction distance condition evaluation index with respect to the distance between the subject vehicle and the forward object becomes larger with decreasing distance between the subject vehicle and the forward object;
an index comparison unit configured to determine whether the correction distance condition evaluation index reaches a predetermined threshold of the correction distance condition evaluation index;
and
an assist control unit configured to perform an acceleration control operation to accelerate the subject vehicle when the index comparison unit determines that the correction distance condition evaluation index reaches the predetermined threshold of the correction distance condition evaluation index.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.