US 6,476,780 B2Granted

Road image display device

AssigneeHonda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

InventorShinichi Matsunaga

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Abstract

A road image display device for displaying an image of a road whereon a vehicle is travelling on a display screen by scrolling the road image at a specified speed as one would feel driving a vehicle thereon viewing the image from a fixed viewing point, which display device is provided with an input control section for inputting road design data concerning a straight line area, a clothoid curve (relaxed-curvature curve) area and a circular-arc area for a travelling road distance, and an electronic control unit for generating a road image representing a straight-line area, clothoid curve area and a circular-arc area according to the input road design data and which can easily generate any desired road image according to a free road design and more particularly can represent an image of a curved road portion by a curve having a relaxed curvature for joining a straight-line with a circle of a constant curvature.

Claims5

Dependent claims

A road image display device for displaying an image of a designed road from road design data of the designed road, comprising:

road design data inputting means for inputting the road design data comprised of at least straight-line areas, clothoid curve areas and circular-arc areas as designed for the designed road;
and
road image generating means for progressively generating a road image on said display screen simulating a directly forward view of the designed road from within a vehicle travelling on the designed road, said road image based solely on and representing the road design data comprising said at least straight-line areas, clothoid curve areas and circular-arc areas according to said inputted road design data, and said road image generating means progressively modifying said generated road image in response to simulating the travelling on the designed road at a rate corresponding to a speed of the vehicle on the designed road to continually provide the directly forward view representing an actual directly forward view of the designed road from within the vehicle.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.