Traveling assistance apparatus

A traveling assistance apparatus comprising:

• a travel road recognition result receiving unit that receives a recognition result of a travel road on which a vehicle is traveling;
• a traveling state acquiring unit that acquires a traveling state of the vehicle;
• a deviation determining unit that determines whether or not the vehicle will deviate from the travel road based on at least the recognition result of the travel road received by the travel road recognition result receiving unit, of the recognition result and the traveling state acquired by the traveling state acquiring unit;
• a method determining unit that determines whether to perform, as a prevention method for deviation prevention control to prevent deviation of the vehicle from the travel road when the deviation determining unit determines that the vehicle will deviate from the travel road, a method in which either of steering control and brake control of the vehicle is performed, or a method in which a period over which either of the steering control and the brake control is performed and a period over which both of the steering control and the brake control are performed are set, based on the recognition result and the traveling state;
• and
• a traveling control unit that sets a steering amount for the steering control and a brake amount for the brake control when the deviation prevention control is performed based on the prevention method determined by the method determining unit, based on the recognition result and the traveling state.

A traveling assistance method for suppressing deviation from a travel road, the traveling assistance method comprising:

• a step of recognizing a travel road on which a vehicle is traveling;
• a step of acquiring a traveling state of the vehicle;
• a step of determining whether or not the vehicle will deviate from the travel road based on at least a recognition result of the travel road, of the recognition result and the traveling state;
• a step of determining whether to perform, as a prevention method for deviation prevention control to prevent deviation of the vehicle from the travel road when the vehicle is determined to deviate from the travel road, a method in which either of steering control and brake control of the vehicle is performed, or a method in which a period over which either of the steering control and the brake control is performed and a period over which both of the steering control and the brake control are performed are set, based on the recognition result and the traveling state;
• and
• a step of setting a steering amount for the steering control and a brake amount for the brake control when the deviation prevention control is performed based on the prevention method that has been determined.