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US 7,565,006 B2Granted
Image acquisition and processing methods for automatic vehicular exterior lighting control
AssigneeGentex Corporation
InventorsJoseph S. Stam, Gregory A. Mart, Keith H. Berends, Gregory S. Bush, John K. Roberts, Mark W. Pierce, Jon H. Bechtel, Eric J. Walstra, Brock R. Rycenga
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Abstract
The present invention relates to various apparatus, algorithms and methods for acquiring and processing images of a scene. Details of various aspects of the associated images are identified and may be utilized to generate various vehicular equipment control signals.
Claims19
An automatic vehicular exterior light control, comprising:
- a controller configured to generate at least one exterior light control signal as a function of at least one probability function, wherein said at least one probability function comprises a plurality of variables and a substantially continuous output value having at least three states indicative of a probability;
- and wherein said variables are selected from the group of controlled vehicle associated operating parameters comprising:
- vehicle speed, ambient light level, vehicle turn rate, lane tracking, vehicle pitch, vehicle yaw, geographic location and road type.
An automatic vehicular exterior light control, comprising:
- a controller configured to generate at least one exterior light control signal as a function of at least one probability function, wherein said at least one probability function comprises a plurality of variables, a plurality of weighting factors and an output, wherein said output comprises at least three states;
- and wherein said variables are selected from the group of controlled vehicle associated operating parameters comprising:
- vehicle speed, ambient light level, vehicle turn rate, lane tracking, vehicle pitch, vehicle yaw, geographic location and road type.
An automatic vehicular exterior light control, comprising:
- a controller configured to generate an exterior light control signal, said controller is further configured to execute a first algorithm comprising at least one second algorithm selected from the group comprising:
- an on state to off state transition state algorithm and an off state to on state transition state algorithm;
- wherein said off state to on state transition state is entered when at least one of the conditions is satisfied selected from the group comprising:
- scene free of headlamps and tail lamps with brightness above a threshold, less than threshold number of AC lights in image, less than threshold number of lights in the image, threshold number of continuous clear cycles reached, controlled vehicle speed above threshold, controlled vehicle steering wheel angle magnitude below threshold value, HOLD timer elapsed. INACTIVITY timer elapsed, TAILLAMP OVERTAKE timer, FOG condition clear, RAIN condition clear, street lamp density below threshold and traffic density delay.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.