Drive assist system for vehicle
AssigneeFuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMasahiro Kinoshita, Atsushi Ikeda
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In a vehicular drive assist system for warning a driver to pay attention to a preceding vehicle running ahead when a vehicle comes close to the preceding vehicle and the distance between these two vehicles becomes smaller than a safe inter-vehicle distance, this safe inter-vehicle distance is automatically established in two stages according to traffic conditions. One stage is where road is empty and another is where road is crowded. Since the safe inter-vehicle distance at the crowded condition is established to be a smaller value than the one at the empty condition, when road is crowded, due to the shortened safe inter-vehicle distance, warning is prevented from being issued so frequently.
Claims11
A drive assist system for a vehicle, comprising:
- traffic conditions judging means for judging a traffic condition for said vehicle;
- first safe inter-vehicle distance establishing means for establishing a first safe inter-vehicle distance according to said judged traffic condition;
- first inter-vehicle distance comparing means for comparing a calculated inter-vehicle distance between the vehicle and a preceding vehicle with said first safe inter-vehicle distance and for outputting a first signal when said calculated inter-vehicle distance becomes smaller than said first safe inter-vehicle distance;
- second safe inter-vehicle distance establishing means for establishing a second safe inter-vehicle distance smaller than said first safe inter-vehicle distance;
- and
- second inter-vehicle distance comparing means for comparing said calculated inter-vehicle distance with said second safe inter-vehicle distance and for outputting a second signal when said calculated inter-vehicle distance becomes smaller than said second safe inter-vehicle distance.
The drive assist system according to claim 3, wherein
- said crowded condition is defined as a condition during a time period in which said preceding vehicle exists within a specified range of distance after said first signal or second signal is output and in which said preceding vehicle is out of said specified range of distance but within a specified time after said first signal or second signal is output.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.