Communications: electrical – Land vehicle alarms or indicators – Of relative distance from an obstacle
Reexamination Certificate
1997-08-29
2001-01-09
Lefkowitz, Edward (Department: 2736)
Communications: electrical
Land vehicle alarms or indicators
Of relative distance from an obstacle
C340S436000, C340S903000, C348S148000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06172600
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for detecting a vehicle condition, more particularly to the method and apparatus for detecting a lane on a road by defining boundaries of the opposite sides of the road.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to define the boundary of the road, an article entitled “Correlation between Vehicle's Meandering and Driver's Arousal Level” is disclosed in the papers of JSAE (Society of Automotive Engineering of Japan, Inc.) Convention Proceedings 941, pp. 25-28 published in May, 1994. Another method is proposed in the Nikkei Industrial newspaper entitled “A Complete Reformed Large Truck” published on Jun. 6, 1996.
In these related publications, an image processing system is proposed for processing image information in a visible region in front of an automotive vehicle so as to be applied for various uses. According to the JSAE paper, the system detects meandering and the driver's alertness level from the front view of the vehicle. According to the newspaper, the truck detects a meandering condition of the vehicle from the front view of the vehicle. However, because the camera is mounted on the front portion of the vehicle, it is not possible to detect an obstacle in the rear area from the image information.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to detect a vehicle location on the road and an obstacle in the rear area simultaneously.
In order to achieve the above mentioned objects, a vehicle condition detecting apparatus has means for detecting an image mounted on the rear portion of a vehicle and for introducing image information, means for detecting lines indicative of boundaries on the basis of the density of the image information, means for warning when a distance between the vehicle and the lines exceeds a predetermined value and means for lighting a rear region of the vehicle.
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JSAE Convention Proceedings 941, pp. 25-28, published May, 1994.
Inoue Ryo
Kakinami Toshiaki
Kimura Yoshikatsu
Zhu Zhong-shan
Aisin Seiki Kabushiki Kaisha
Lefkowitz Edward
Sughrue Mion Zinn Macpeak & Seas, PLLC
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