Vehicle lighting apparatus
AssigneeToyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsTomonari SAWADA, Trenton Boyd LINDHOLM, Arab KROUBI, Michael Shin HONG
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A lighting ECU determines whether or not a road sign relating to an urban area or a residential area is detected, while it is performing an automatic high beam control. When the detected road sign is a road sign indicating a start point of the urban area or of the residential area, the lighting ECU terminates the automatic high beam control, and maintain a light distribution pattern to a pattern corresponding to low beam. The lighting ECU restarts the automatic high beam control, when the detected road sign is a road sign indicating an end point of the urban area or of the residential area.
Claims6
A vehicle lighting apparatus comprising:
- a lamp unit configured to radiate light in a forward direction of a host vehicle;
- a camera device configured to take a picture of a scene in front of the vehicle;
- and
- a control unit configured to control distribution of light radiated from said lamp unit,
- wherein,
- said control unit is configured to:
- obtain road sign information on a road sign posted ahead of said host vehicle based on said picture taken by said camera device;
- determine whether or not said host vehicle is traveling in a specific area based on said road sign information;
- and
- control said distribution of light radiated from said lamp unit in such a manner that a light distribution pattern by said lamp unit matches a specific light distribution pattern for said specific area, when it is determined that said host vehicle is traveling in said specific area.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.