Brake control apparatus for vehicle
AssigneeToyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMotonari OHBAYASHI, Akihiro KIDA, Toshihiro TAKAGI, Masashi YAMAZAKI, Tatsuya NISHI
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A vehicle brake control apparatus according to the invention stops an activation of a brake device when a person exists outside of a braking area. The apparatus determines whether or not the person exists outside of the braking area on the basis of a moving direction and a moving amount of at least one characteristic point included in a landscape image captured by a camera device when a person image included in the landscape image cannot be detected by a pattern matching technique.
Claims5
A vehicle brake control apparatus applied to a vehicle including:
- a brake device for braking the vehicle;
- and
- image capture means for capturing an image of a landscape in a traveling direction of the vehicle as a landscape image,
- the vehicle brake control apparatus comprising control means configured:
- to perform a process for detecting a person image included in the landscape image by a pattern matching technique, the person image being an image of a person;
- to determine whether or not a person exists in a braking area on the basis of a position of the person image in the landscape image when the control means detects the person image included in the landscape image, the braking area being a part of a traveling scheduled area of the vehicle which the vehicle may collide against the person when the person exists in the braking area;
- to start an activation of the brake device to brake the vehicle when the control means determines that the person exists in the braking area;
- to determine whether or not the person exists outside of the braking area on the basis of the position of the person image in the landscape image after the control means starts the activation of the brake device;
- and
- to stop the activation of the brake device when the control means determines that the person exists outside of the braking area,
- wherein the control means is configured:
- to determine whether or not a non-detection situation occurs after the control means starts the activation of the brake device, the non-detection situation being a situation that the control means cannot detect the person image by the pattern matching technique;
- to acquire at least one first characteristic point included in a first landscape image and at least one second characteristic point included in a second landscape image when the non-detection situation occurs before the control means determines that the person exists outside of the braking area, the first landscape image being the landscape image acquired at a first time, the second landscape image being the landscape image acquired at a second time before the first time, the at least one second characteristic point corresponding to the at least one first characteristic point;
- to acquire a moving direction and a moving amount of the at least one first or second characteristic point on the basis of the at least one first characteristic point and the at least one second characteristic point;
- and
- to stop the activation of the brake device when the control means determines that the person exists outside of the braking area on the basis of the moving direction and the moving amount.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.