JP2003205805A - Operation supporting device for vehicle - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce a psychological burden of a driver by a method wherein, before operation support control is suspended, suspension of control can be previously announced, with an operation supporting device for a vehicle to alarm deviation of a vehicle from a vehicle lane. <P>SOLUTION: The operation supporting device for the vehicle comprises ambient monitoring means 1 and 2 to monitor the ambient state of the vehicle; an operation supporting means 11 to support drive operation of the driver based on information from the ambient monitoring means 1 and 2; a present position recognizing means 13 to recognize the present position of the vehicle; a road state recognizing means 16 to recognize the front road state of the vehicle; and an information providing means 5 to previously provide the driver with information when reduction of operation reliability of the operation supporting means 11 is predicted based on information from the road state recognizing means 16. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a driving assistance device for a vehicle, which warns of deviation from a lane of a vehicle and assists a part of a driving operation so that a distance between vehicles can be kept constant. A driving assistance device for a vehicle, which is configured to give advance notice of a future operating state of the device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a driving assistance device capable of recognizing a white line on a road by a camera to warn a lane deviation, or detecting a preceding vehicle by a laser radar and maintaining a predetermined distance between the preceding vehicle and the preceding vehicle. Has been put to practical use. Such a driving support device recognizes the surrounding environment of the vehicle, road conditions, etc. based on information from various sensors mounted on the vehicle and notifies the driver of necessary information by voice or display, or It is designed to assist the avoidance operation.

For example, in the lane departure warning control, a camera for picking up an image of the front of the vehicle is provided, a white line is recognized based on image information from the camera, and the lane recognition is performed by utilizing the white line recognition. When the vehicle is about to depart from the lane, the driver is warned by vibrating the steering wheel lightly or giving a voice warning.

[0004]

By the way, in the prior art, when the information from the above-mentioned sensor is not sufficiently obtained and the control of the driving support device is interrupted, the driving support control for the driver is interrupted. Information can be notified only when the control is interrupted or at a timing after the interrupt, and the driver is required to take appropriate measures immediately when the information is acquired. There was a problem that the burden was heavy.

The present invention was devised in view of such problems, and it is possible to reduce the psychological burden on the driver by giving advance notice of the interruption of the control before the interruption of the driving support control. An object of the present invention is to provide a driving support device for a vehicle.

[0006]

Therefore, in the vehicle driving support apparatus according to the first aspect of the present invention, the surrounding condition of the vehicle is monitored by the surrounding monitoring means, and the driving operation of the driver is performed by the driving support means. Will be supported. When the current position recognizing unit recognizes the current position of the vehicle, the road condition recognizing unit recognizes the road condition in front of the vehicle based on the current position information and the road information ahead of the vehicle. Note that the road information ahead of the vehicle is, for example, map information stored in a storage medium, map information received by road-to-vehicle communication, traffic jam information ahead, road surface condition information, and information about the presence or absence of a broken vehicle. Is preferred.

When the road condition recognizing means predicts a decrease in operational reliability of the driving support means, for example, when a tunnel exists ahead, the information providing means informs the driver in advance. With this, the driver can predict that the operation of the driving support means will stop,
The driver's burden is reduced and safety is improved.

Further, in the vehicle driving support apparatus according to the second aspect of the present invention, the surrounding condition of the vehicle is monitored by the surrounding monitoring means, and the driving support means assists the driving operation of the driver. Also, when the current position of the vehicle is recognized by the current position recognition means, the road condition recognition means
The road condition in front of the vehicle is recognized based on the current position information and the road information in front of the vehicle. Note that the road information ahead of the vehicle is, for example, map information stored in a storage medium, map information received by road-to-vehicle communication, traffic jam information ahead, road surface condition information, and information about the presence or absence of a broken vehicle. .

Further, the reliability calculation means calculates the actual operation reliability of the driving support means on the basis of the information from the peripheral monitoring means. When the calculation result is less than the threshold value, the operation stop means makes the operation support means The operation stops. And
When the road condition recognition means predicts a decrease in operational reliability of the driving support means, for example, when a tunnel exists ahead, the information providing means provides the driver with information in advance, and When the information is provided, the threshold changing means changes the threshold for stopping the operation of the driving support means, and the threshold is lowered.

Therefore, the driver can predict that the operation of the driving support means will be stopped, the burden on the driver is reduced, and the safety is improved. Further, when the information of the operation stop of the driving support means is provided, the threshold value of the operation reliability becomes lower than usual, so that the driving support means can be continued as much as possible. In other words, in such a case, the driver has already predicted the stoppage of the operation of the driving support means and has been increasing his / her attention. Therefore, by continuing the operation of the driving support means as much as possible, the safety can be further improved. it can.

[0011]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION A vehicle driving support device according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In the present embodiment, a case where lane departure warning control based on white line recognition is applied will be described as a specific example of driving assistance control. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the overall configuration of a vehicle driving assistance device according to the present embodiment, in which 1 is a camera, 2 is a laser radar, 3 is a throttle actuator, 4 is a brake actuator, and 5 is a display. And the like, 6 is an ECU or controller (control means), 8 is a steering actuator, 9 is a brake switch, and 10 is an accelerator sensor. In the present embodiment, the camera 1 and the laser radar 2 constitute a surroundings monitoring means for monitoring the condition around the vehicle.

The camera 1 is a stereoscopic camera in which two CCD cameras for taking pictures of the scenery in front of the vehicle are horizontally arranged, and is attached, for example, in the vicinity of a rearview mirror. The image information captured by the camera 1 is taken in by the controller 6, and the controller 6 performs image processing on the information from the camera 1 so that a plurality of vehicles in front (preceding vehicle) or highways can be captured. The white line indicating the lane in which the own vehicle is traveling in the lane (lane) and the inter-vehicle distance between the preceding vehicle and the own vehicle can be individually recognized. These recognitions are made, for example, in JP-A-7-69.
Although it is a known technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 094, it will be briefly described below.

The above-described recognition of the preceding vehicle is performed as follows, for example. That is, the area surrounded by the vertical straight lines is extracted from the image, and the one that is symmetrical in the extracted area and whose position does not move much in the captured images is recognized as the preceding vehicle. To do. The above-described recognition of the white line indicating the traveling lane of the own vehicle is performed as follows, for example. That is, as shown in FIG. 2A, the front road image captured by the camera 1 is captured, and then, as shown in FIG. 2B, a plurality of (for example, 30) images are captured at regular intervals on the captured image. Set the horizontal line of the book.

Then, the brightness of the pixels along each line is checked, bright points are selected as white line candidates, and lines connecting the upper and lower candidate points are recognized as white lines, as shown in FIG. 2 (c). To do. Further, recognition of the inter-vehicle distance between the preceding vehicle and the own vehicle is performed as follows. That is, two images are obtained from the two cameras of the stereo camera 1 as shown in FIGS. 3 (a) and 3 (b). The same image as the car image enclosed by the window on the right image is slightly laterally displaced from the left image. Therefore, the position of the most matching image is obtained by shifting the right side vehicle image surrounded by the window by one pixel in the search region of the left side image. At this time, as shown in FIG. 4, the focal lengths of the lenses of the two cameras provided in the stereo camera 1 are f, the distance between the optical axes is L, and the pixel pitch of the CCD is p.
In (a) and (b), assuming that the number of pixels shifted from the right image until the left and right vehicle images match is n, the distance (inter-vehicle distance) R to the preceding vehicle is calculated by the triangulation principle. It can be calculated by the following formula. R = (f ・ L) / (n ・
p) On the other hand, one laser radar 2 is disposed on each of the left and right sides of the front end of the vehicle, and the laser beam emitted from the laser radar 2 is reflected by the object again. By measuring the time until it returns to 2, the distance to the object can be measured.

Next, the main part of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 5. The controller 6 is provided with a control signal setting means (driving support means) 11, and the control signal setting means 11 has been described above. Camera 1 and laser radar 2
Control signals for the throttle actuator 3, the brake actuator 4, and the steering actuator 8 are set based on information from sensors (vehicle surroundings monitoring means) such as the above.

By controlling the operation of each of the actuators 3, 4, 8 based on this control signal, various driving assistance such as lane departure warning control, inter-vehicle distance warning control and tracking traveling control can be realized. Has become. Also, FIG.
This vehicle has a navigation system 1
2 is also provided. This navigation system 12
Is a current position recognizing unit (current position recognizing means) 13 for obtaining the current position (latitude, longitude) of the vehicle based on radio wave information from a plurality of artificial satellites, and map information stored in a storage medium 14 such as a DVD-ROM. The present position is displayed on the driver by the present position recognizing unit 13 and the map information stored in the storage medium 14.

Further, as shown in the figure, this vehicle is equipped with a beacon receiver 15 for road-to-vehicle communication so that it is possible to obtain information on the forward road emitted from the road infrastructure. Here, as the forward road information,
For example, it is information on the curve radius of the road ahead, construction information, weather, road surface condition, presence / absence of a broken vehicle, and the like. In addition, in the storage medium (map information) 14 of the navigation system 12,
Since the information on the presence / absence of road curves and tunnels, the presence / absence of branch roads, the presence / absence of intersections, and the like are stored, such map information can also be regarded as one of the front road information.

A road condition recognizing means 16 is provided in the controller 6, and the road condition recognizing means 1 is provided.
6, the road condition in the future is recognized based on the information from the navigation system 12 and the beacon receiver 15 described above, and it is determined whether or not the driving support control will be disturbed. Specifically, in the road condition recognition means 16, "the number of meters ahead of which the white line recognition will be interrupted because of entering the tunnel", "the number of meters ahead of which there will be a sharp curve and the recognition of the white line will be difficult", "the number of meters ahead" There is a branch road and the white line disappears. "

In the present invention, the road condition recognition means 1
If it is determined by 6 that there is a possibility that the white line cannot be recognized due to road conditions within the range of the predetermined distance, the driver is informed in advance that the driving support control may be stopped ( This is also called incapable information). Also such inca
The pable information is provided by, for example, display using the display 5a of the navigation device 12 or voice guidance from the speaker 5b.

Further, it is possible to inform which of the various driving support controls is to be stopped and for what reason.
There is a possibility that the lane departure warning control may be interrupted because you are entering a tunnel. " The display 5a and the speaker 5b constitute the information providing means 5.

Therefore, the driver can know beforehand the possibility of stopping the driving support control before the driving support control is interrupted, so that the psychological burden is reduced as compared with the case where the driving support is suddenly interrupted. can do. By the way, the controller 6 is provided with a reliability calculation means 17 for calculating the operation reliability of the driving support means 11. The reliability calculation means 17 digitizes the operation reliability of the driving support means 11, and when the operation reliability is less than or equal to a threshold value, the driving support means 11 is stopped by the stop means 18 described later.
Is stopped (that is, the driving support control is interrupted).

The reliability calculation means 11 calculates the reliability based on the information from the sensors 1 and 2, for example, as follows. For example, in recognizing a white line, as described above, the horizontal lines with respect to the image obtained from the camera 1 are separated by n intervals.
A book (in this case, n = 30) is drawn, and points with high lightness on each of these lines are recognized as white line candidate points. However, some lines cannot obtain such white line candidate points depending on conditions such as road conditions and weather. Therefore, the number x of lines for which the white line candidate points can be obtained is counted, and the counted number x is set as the reliability.

The calculation result of the reliability calculating means 17 is output to the stopping means 18, and the stopping means 1
In 8, the reliability of the driving support means 11 is compared with a predetermined threshold value, and when it is less than or equal to this threshold value, it is determined that the white line cannot be correctly recognized and the driving support control by the driving support means 11 is stopped. Here, the threshold value is set to 10 and the number of lines for which the white line candidate points are obtained is 10
When it becomes less than or equal to this value, the driving support control is stopped.

As described above, when it is determined by the road condition recognition means 16 that the driving support control may be stopped, the driver is notified of this in advance as incapable information. In this case,
Drivers are expected to drive with increased alertness.
Therefore, when such incapable information is output, the driving support control is not stopped when it becomes the threshold value or less as usual, but the threshold value is lowered and the driving support control is continued even under conditions worse than usual. It has become. For example, usually, when the number of white line candidate points obtained is 10 or less, the driving support control is stopped (threshold value x = 1.
0) When information is provided to the driver in advance as described above, the driving support control is executed until the number of lines for which the white line candidate points are obtained by lowering the threshold value x is, for example, 5 or less. ing.

For this reason, the controller 6 is provided with a threshold value changing means 19 and the threshold value changing means 19
When the capable information is output, the threshold value changing means 19 lowers the threshold value set in the stopping means 18. In the present embodiment, specifically, the threshold value is set to a half value. Therefore, even if it becomes difficult to recognize the white line when entering a tunnel, for example, incapa
By lowering the threshold for determining whether or not to interrupt the driving support control on the condition that the ble information is output, the driving support control will be continued even in the situation where the driving support is normally interrupted. .

Since the vehicle driving support device according to the embodiment of the present invention is configured as described above, for example, FIG.
The operation is controlled according to the flowchart shown in FIG. First, in step S1, various information is taken in. Specifically, the current position, road information ahead and the like are fetched from the navigation system 12 and the beacon receiver 15 for road-to-vehicle communication. Next, in step S2,
Based on the information obtained in step S1, the road condition ahead, that is, the presence or absence of a tunnel ahead, the radius of the road curve (the presence or absence of a sharp curve), the presence or absence of a branch road, road construction, weather conditions, road surface conditions, and broken vehicles Recognize the presence or absence of

Next, in step S3, after calculating the present operation reliability of the driving support means 11, the process proceeds to step S4,
It is determined whether or not the current control cycle is the first control cycle. Then, in the case of the first control cycle, the process proceeds to step S7, and based on the information obtained in step S2, it is determined whether or not the driving assistance control may be interrupted due to the change in the road situation ahead. If the driving support control is not interrupted, the process proceeds to step S8, the driving support control is continued as it is, and the process returns.

On the other hand, if there is a possibility that the driving support control will be interrupted in step S7, the process proceeds to step S9, and incapable information is provided to the driver. So in this case,
A message indicating that the driving support control will be interrupted is displayed or voice guidance is given. Then, in step S10, the threshold value of the operation reliability is lowered, and then the process proceeds to step S8. In the subsequent control cycle, the process proceeds from step S4 to step S5, and it is determined whether the operation reliability is equal to or less than the threshold value. And
When the operation reliability is lower than the threshold value, the process proceeds to step S6, and after the operation of the driving support means 11 is stopped (that is, after the driving support control is interrupted), the process returns.
If it is determined in step S5 that the reliability is higher than the threshold value, the process proceeds to step S7 while the driving support control is continued, and the processes in step S8 and subsequent steps are repeated as described above.

Therefore, according to the driving support apparatus of the present invention, the driver can be warned beforehand of the possibility before the driving support control is actually interrupted or failed, so that the driving support control is suddenly interrupted. Compared with the case, the psychological burden on the driver is significantly reduced. Further, this can also contribute to the improvement of safety. Further, in this case, the threshold value changing unit 19 reduces the threshold value for determining whether or not to stop the operation of the driving support unit 11, so that there is an advantage that the driving support control can be continued as much as possible. That is, in such a case, since the driver has already predicted the interruption of the driving support control and has increased his / her attention, by continuing the operation of the driving support means 11 as much as possible,
The safety can be further increased.

The driving support device of the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiment, and various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit of the present invention. For example, in the above-described embodiment, when it is determined that the driving assistance control may be interrupted and incapable information is output in advance, the operation threshold of the driving assistance control is configured to be reduced, but the operation threshold is changed. May be configured to simply output incapable information without performing the above.

Further, although the case where the map information is acquired from the storage medium 14 of the navigation system has been described above, the map information may be acquired from the road infrastructure through road-vehicle communication. In addition to the camera (CCD camera) 1 and the laser radar 2 described above, various sensors such as an infrared camera, a lane marker sensor, a front radio wave radar, a side radio wave radar, and a rear side camera are applied as the peripheral monitoring means. can do.

In the above-described embodiment, the case where the lane departure warning control based on the white line recognition is applied as a specific example of the driving assistance control has been described. However, in addition to such lane departure warning control, inter-vehicle distance warning control is performed. The present invention can be applied to various driving support controls using white line recognition, such as tracking control, light distribution control for controlling headlight irradiation direction, and the like. Further, in addition to the driving support control based on the white line recognition as described above, it can be applied to the driving support control using a laser radar or a radio wave radar, a curve is detected as a road condition in the front, or the road ahead is under construction. If it is detected that the preceding vehicle is out of the radar detection range, incapable information may be output, or the operating threshold of the driving assistance control may be lowered at that time. In addition to this, a night pedestrian monitor that informs the driver of the presence of pedestrians, a road surface condition monitor that informs the driver by estimating the slipperiness of the road surface, and when there is a vehicle behind or on the side, this It is possible to apply various controls such as a rear side alarm control for informing the driver of.

Further, when the navigation system 12 detects that the road infrastructure for road-to-vehicle communication is not maintained on the road to be passed ahead and the driving support control using the road infrastructure cannot be used, it is incapable.
Information may be output.

[0034]

As described above in detail, according to the driving assistance system for a vehicle of the present invention as set forth in claim 1, the possibility that the driving assistance control can be given to the driver in advance before the interruption or failure of the driving assistance control is actually made. Since the warning can be given, the psychological burden on the driver is significantly reduced as compared with the case where the driving support control is suddenly interrupted. Further, this can also contribute to the improvement of safety.

According to the vehicle driving support device of the present invention as defined in claim 2, in addition to the advantage of claim 1 described above, when the information providing means provides the information, the driving support means operates. Since the threshold value for determining whether or not to stop is lowered, there is an advantage that the driving support control can be continued as much as possible.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing an overall configuration of a vehicle driving assistance device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a white line recognition method of the vehicle driving assistance device according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a method of detecting an inter-vehicle distance of the vehicle driving assistance device according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a method of detecting an inter-vehicle distance of the vehicle driving assistance device according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a schematic block diagram showing a main configuration of a vehicle driving assistance device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the vehicle driving assistance device according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols] 1 Cameras that make up the peripheral monitoring means 2 Laser radar that constitutes peripheral monitoring means 5 Information provision means 11 Driving support means 13 Current position recognition means 16 Road condition recognition means 17 Reliability calculation means 18 Operation stop means 19 Threshold changing means

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Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A surroundings monitoring means for monitoring a condition around a vehicle, a driving assistance means for assisting a driving operation of a driver based on information from the surroundings monitoring means, and a current position for recognizing a current position of the vehicle. A position recognizing unit, a road condition recognizing unit that recognizes a front road condition of the vehicle based on information from the current position recognizing unit and front road information of the vehicle, and the road condition recognizing unit based on information from the road condition recognizing unit. A driving assistance device for a vehicle, comprising: an information providing means for providing the driver with information in advance when a decrease in operational reliability of the driving assistance means is predicted. 2. A surroundings monitoring means for monitoring a condition around the vehicle, a driving assistance means for assisting a driver's driving operation based on information from the surroundings monitoring means, and a present position for recognizing a current position of the vehicle. A position recognizing unit, a road condition recognizing unit that recognizes a front road condition of the vehicle based on information from the current position recognizing unit and front road information of the vehicle, and the road condition recognizing unit based on information from the road condition recognizing unit. When a decrease in the operation reliability of the driving support means is predicted, the information providing means for providing the driver with information in advance, and the actual operation reliability of the driving support means based on the information from the surrounding monitoring means. Reliability operation means for calculating, operation stopping means for stopping the operation of the driving support means when the operation result by the reliability operation means is less than or equal to a threshold value, and the information providing means provides information. If it makes is characterized by having a threshold value changing means for decreasing the threshold value for stopping the operation of the driving support unit, the driving support apparatus for a vehicle.