Communications: electrical – Land vehicle alarms or indicators – Internal alarm or indicator responsive to a condition of the...
Patent
1995-08-28
1998-04-28
Hofsass, Jeffery
Communications: electrical
Land vehicle alarms or indicators
Internal alarm or indicator responsive to a condition of the...
340575, 340576, B60Q 100
Patent
active
057450315
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a safety driving system for use with a motor vehicle, and more particularly to a safety driving system which alerts a driver who is likely to be driving while half asleep.
DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART
A motor vehicle has a number of devices which are operated by the driver, e.g. a steering wheel, an accelerator pedal, a brake pedal, a gear lever, a winker lever, a wiper switch, lamp switches and so on.
The less frequently those driver-operated devices are required to be operated, the more driving will become monotonous, and the more the driver will feel fatigued and sleepy. In such a state, there is a high probability that the driver is likely to fall into a semi-sleep while driving.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Sho 58-105,844 discloses a safety driving system in which an alarm is emitted when a predetermined period of time lapses before the driver manipulates at least one of the driver-operated devices.
Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Sho 58-175,094 proposes a safety driving system which emits an alarm in the following case. Each time a predetermined period of time passes before the driver operates at least one of the driver-operated devices a preset number of times, digital data "1" is accumulated in a counter. Then, when the accumulated value exceeds a preset value, an alarm will be emitted to alert the driver.
It has been ascertained that a degree of zigzag running (called "zigzag amount" hereinafter) of a vehicle depends upon a driver's alertness. FIG. 42 of the accompanying drawings shows one example of data of which the inventors are aware.
Detection of the zigzag amount of the vehicle is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Sho 3-273,498. In this publication, a video camera takes pictures of a road surface in front of the vehicle. A reference point of a lane is calculated on the basis of a cross point of white lines defining the lane. When the cross point of the white lines deviates from the reference point, it is checked whether the deviation corresponds to a turning signal. If not, an alarm will be emitted.
In the former two publications, the driver's level of activity is periodically sampled and checked on the basis of the frequency of operation of driver-operated devices. It is difficult to precisely ascertain the driver's alertness, which is continuously changing.
In the third example, an alarm is emitted when the deviation of the vehicle from the reference point does not precisely correspond to a turning signal. However, it does not always follow that mismatching between the deviation from the reference point and the turn signal precisely corresponds to the alertness of the driver. It is required to precisely detect the foregoing correspondence between the zigzag running of the vehicle and the alertness of the driver.
The present invention is intended to provide a safety driving system which correctly and continuously detects varying alertness of the driver after he or she starts driving, and alerts the driver, if necessary.
A further object of the invention is to provide a safety driving system which correctly detects alertness of the driver through recognition of white lines on a road surface, and alerts the driver, if necessary.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a safety driving system comprising: an operation detecting section including an accumulator for periodically accumulating a constant during operation of a vehicle and deriving monotonousness, and subtracting means for subtracting a weight assigned to an operated device, except for a steering wheel, from a sum of accumulated constants and updating the monotonousness; a steering operation detecting section detecting an amount of steering operation within a preset period of time; a running position detecting section including an image data memory selectively receiving and storing photographed images of a road surface in front of a vehicle, image processing means extracting d
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Hofsass Jeffery
Mitsubishi Jidosha Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
Woods Davetta
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