Vehicle Driving Assistance Apparatus

A vehicle driving assistance apparatus comprising:

• a camera which is installed in a vehicle and captures a road on which the vehicle travels;
• a white line pattern recognition section which recognizes patterns of white lines that are present on left and right sides of the vehicle on the road on the basis of an image captured by the camera;
• a vehicle-travelling traffic lane estimation section which estimates a traffic lane of the vehicle on the basis of a recognition result of the white line pattern recognition section;
• a white line pattern storage section which stores the white line pattern recognized by the white line pattern recognition section;
• a white line pattern estimation section which estimates current white line patterns on the left and right sides of the vehicle from white line patterns stored in the white line pattern storage section when the white line pattern cannot be recognized by the white line pattern recognition section;
• and
• a vehicle control system which executes a vehicle control on the basis of the recognition result of the white line pattern recognition section and an estimation result of the white line pattern estimation section, and
• when the white line pattern is recognized by the white line pattern recognition section, the vehicle control system performing the vehicle control on the basis of the recognized white line pattern, and
• when the white line pattern is not recognized by the white line pattern recognition section, the vehicle control system performing the vehicle control on the basis of the white line pattern estimated by the white line pattern estimation section.

A vehicle driving assistance apparatus comprising:

• a white line pattern recognition section which recognizes patterns of white lines that are present on left and right sides of a vehicle by an image captured by a camera;
• a branch formation determination section which recognizes presence of a branch and determines a formation of the branch on the basis of map data;
• a vehicle-travelling traffic lane estimation section which estimates a traffic lane of the vehicle on the basis of a recognition result of the white line pattern recognition section;
• a white line pattern storage section which stores the white line pattern recognized by the white line pattern recognition section;
• a white line pattern estimation section which estimates the white line patterns on the left and right sides of the vehicle from white line patterns stored in the white line pattern storage section when the white line pattern cannot be recognized by the white line pattern recognition section;
• a traffic lane change judgment section which judges a lane change of the vehicle from a main lane to a branch lane on the basis of the branch formation determined by the branch formation determination section, an estimation result of the vehicle-travelling traffic lane estimation section and the white pattern;
• and
• a vehicle control system which executes a deceleration control that decelerates a vehicle speed by driving an actuator at least after the judgment of the lane change by the traffic lane change judgment section.