JP2005343351A - Drive supporting device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a drive supporting device capable of correctly informing a driver of the surrounding situation of a vehicle. <P>SOLUTION: An objective article identification unit 2 identifies an objective article to be attended by a driver based on the driving view field related data related to the driving view field of the driver of the vehicle which is acquired by a peripheral situation detection unit 1 mounted on the vehicle to detect the peripheral situation. A display unit 3 projects an index to pay attention to the objective article to the driver on a windshield of the vehicle based on the output to indicate the result of identification by the objective article identification unit 2. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a technology for supporting driving of a vehicle, and more particularly to a technology for notifying a driver of a situation around the vehicle.

  For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses an image pickup unit that detects a vehicle surrounding condition as image information, and an image that displays an image of the detected vehicle surrounding condition on a screen. Display means, moving body detecting means for detecting a moving body that moves relative to the vehicle around the vehicle, and the position of the moving body on the screen based on information from the moving body detecting means And a vehicle surrounding situation display for alerting the driver to the moving body by the highlighting. The highlighting means adds a highlighting to the image area where the moving body is present in the screen. An apparatus is disclosed.

  For example, Patent Document 2 discloses a travel information providing device. This device first determines the possibility of contact between an obstacle such as an obstacle around the vehicle and the own vehicle, sets a maximum alarm level according to the importance level, and requires it based on the direction of the existence. Find the gaze direction. On the other hand, the gaze direction currently being viewed by the driver is measured from the driver's gaze direction data data obtained by an eye camera or the like. Then, the gaze frequency at which the driver is looking at the necessary gaze direction is measured from the necessary gaze direction and the measured gaze direction, and when the gaze frequency is high, the previous maximum alarm level is adjusted to a lower alarm level, and notification is made. An alarm is notified by the device.

In addition, as a technique related to the present invention, for example, Patent Document 3 discloses a vehicle head-up display device that projects and reflects a display image of a display on a transmissive reflector disposed in front of a driver's seat of an automobile. The invention is disclosed.
Japanese Patent No. 3431678 JP 7-167668 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-8661

  Among the documents listed above, the surrounding state display device for a vehicle disclosed in Patent Document 1 is highlighted on the screen, so that the driver can visually recognize the highlighted display in front of the vehicle. Since it is necessary to move the line of sight from the vehicle to the screen, it is troublesome and the driver needs to know the correspondence between the substance of the moving object included in the scene in front of the vehicle and the image display of the moving object on the screen. It is not easy to judge.

Also, in the travel information providing apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 2, when the alarm is notified by visual display, in order for the driver to visually recognize the alarm, from the scene in front of the vehicle to the display in the passenger compartment. Since it is necessary to move the line of sight, it is difficult for the driver to judge the existence object to be alarmed.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described problems, and a problem to be solved is to accurately notify the driver of the situation around the vehicle.

  A driving support device according to one aspect of the present invention is based on driving visual field related data related to the driving visual field of the driver of the vehicle, which is obtained by the ambient situation detection means that is mounted on the vehicle and detects the surrounding situation. Attention object identification means for identifying an attention object to be noticed by the driver, and attention to the attention object to the driver on the windshield of the vehicle based on an output representing an identification result by the attention object identification means. Display means for projecting an index for arousing, and this feature solves the above-described problems.

In the driving support device according to the present invention described above, the object-of-interest identifying means is configured to identify an object of interest by receiving image data as driving visual field related data from a camera as the ambient condition detecting means. It may be what was done.
Further, in the driving support apparatus according to the present invention described above, the object-of-interest identifying means includes driving field-related data representing a target detected by an ultrasonic sensor, a laser radar, or a millimeter wave radar as the ambient condition detecting means. The target object detection data may be supplied to identify the target object.

In the driving support device according to the present invention described above, the object-of-interest identification unit includes a position calculation unit that calculates a position on the windshield of the object of interest visually recognized by the driver. It may be.
Further, in the driving support apparatus according to the present invention described above, the display means displays an index on the front windshield as the windshield in accordance with a position corresponding to the target object in the driving field of view. It may be configured.

In the driving support apparatus according to the present invention described above, the display unit may be configured to project an annular index as the index so as to surround the object of interest.
At this time, the display means may be configured to project a golden annular index around the object of interest as the index.

  Further, at this time, the display means may be configured to project the annular index so as to blink as the index.

  Since this invention is comprised as mentioned above, there exists an effect that the condition of the circumference | surroundings of a vehicle can be notified now correctly to a driver | operator.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 shows a principle configuration of a driving support apparatus for carrying out the present invention. In addition, this driving assistance device is mounted on a vehicle and used, and assists the driver in driving the vehicle.
The ambient situation detection unit 1 detects the situation around the vehicle, more specifically, whether any object (for example, another vehicle, a person, an animal, an obstacle, etc.) exists within a predetermined distance from the vehicle. Detect whether or not.

The object-of-interest specifying unit 2 identifies an object (attention object) to be noticed by the driver among the objects acquired by the surrounding state detection unit 1 based on the driving field-related data representing the driving field of view of the driver of the vehicle. Do.
The display unit 3 displays an index for alerting the driver to the attention object on the windshield of the vehicle based on the output representing the identification result by the attention object identification unit 2.

Next, FIG. 2 will be described. The figure shows the structure of the display unit 3.
Light emitted from the light source 1 travels to the lens 13 by the action of the reflector 12. The lens 13 converts this light into parallel light and makes it incident on the image display element 14.
The image display element 14 is, for example, an element that combines a liquid crystal shutter and a color filter. The light transmitted through the image display element 14 is reflected by the mirror 15, passes through the projection lens 16, and is projected onto the combiner (translucent reflector) 18 attached to the windshield (wind shield) 17. As a result, the image displayed on the liquid crystal shutter of the image display element 14 is visually recognized by the driver 10 as the virtual image 19.

That is, the display unit 3 whose structure is shown in FIG. 2 is a so-called HUD (Head Up Display).
Here, FIG. 3 will be described. The figure shows a display example of a warning indicator on the display unit 3, and depicts the field of view of the driver 10 who is driving the vehicle.
In the example of FIG. 3, it is shown that the annular index (index ring 21) that is the virtual image 19 in FIG. 2 is projected by the display unit 3. The indicator ring 21 is displayed so as to surround the target object 22 specified by the target object specifying unit 2 within the visual field of the driver 10. As described above, the indicator ring 21 is displayed in cooperation with the target object 22 in the visual field of the driver 10 so that the driver 10 pays special attention to the target object 21 that is directly visually recognized. Become. In addition, since the indicator ring 21 is displayed by a combiner (translucent reflector) 18 attached to the windshield 17, the target object 22 can be immediately recognized in the field of view. Therefore, the driver 10 is free from the trouble of moving his / her line of sight to the display device installed in the vehicle, and the object of attention 22 which is the target of the alert display on the display device can be viewed from the view through the windshield 17. Eliminates the time and effort of identifying.

Next, FIG. 4 will be described. This figure shows a first example of a specific configuration of the driving support apparatus for carrying out the present invention.
Two video cameras 31A and 31B are installed in front of the vehicle 30 at positions separated left and right. The video cameras 31 </ b> A and 31 </ b> B capture the surroundings of the vehicle 30, particularly the landscape corresponding to the driving field of view of the driver 10, and function as the surrounding state detection unit 1 in FIG. 1.

An analog signal representing an image picked up by each of the video cameras 31A and 31B is converted into image data which is digital data by the A / D converter 32 and then sent to the CPU 33.
A CPU (Central Processing Unit) 33 is a central processing unit that controls the operation of the entire driving support device, and functions as the target object specifying unit 2 in FIG.

A ROM (Read Only Memory) 34 stores a control program executed by the CPU 33 in advance. The CPU 33 reads out the control program from the ROM 34 and executes it to control the operation of the entire driving support device.
A RAM (Random Access Memory) 35 is a memory used as a memory for temporarily storing various data and as a working memory necessary for the CPU 33 to execute the control program described above. .

The D / A 36 converts image data that is digital data output from the CPU 33 into an image signal that is an analog signal.
The display unit 3 shown in FIG. 2 is mounted on the vehicle 30. The image display element 14 displays the image represented by the image data output from the CPU 33 as the virtual image 19 and causes the driver 10 to visually recognize the image.

Next, FIG. 5 will be described. This figure is a flowchart showing the contents of the control process performed by the CPU 33 of FIG. The CPU 33 performs this control process by executing a control program stored in the ROM 34.
When this control process is started, first, in S101, image data (captured image data) representing an image (captured image) captured by each of the video cameras 31A and 31B is acquired from the A / D converter 32. Is done.

In subsequent S102, processing for dividing each captured image into a plurality of small sections having the same position, the same size, and the same shape is performed for each captured image.
In S103, a process of calculating the correlation value between the partially captured images for each captured image included in the same section, the same size, and the same section is performed for each section.
In S104, a process is performed to determine whether or not any correlation value calculated by the process in the previous step indicates that the correlation is lower than a predetermined threshold. Here, if there is one indicating that the correlation is low (the determination result is Yes), the process proceeds to S105. On the other hand, if there is no object indicating that the correlation is low (determination result is No), the process returns to S101 and the above-described process is repeated.

  In the partially captured images of the small sections determined to have a low correlation in the processing of S104, the same object is represented at greatly different positions in the video camera 31A and the video camera 31B. Here, since the video camera 31 </ b> A and the video camera 31 </ b> B are installed at positions separated from each other in the vehicle 30, this means that the object is located quite close to the vehicle 30. Therefore, this object is set as a target object candidate.

  In S105, processing for calculating the distance of the target object candidate detected in this way from the vehicle 30 is performed. This processing is performed using a widely known distance measurement method using a so-called stereo imaging device. That is, how much the position where the candidate is represented differs between the partially captured image by the video camera 31A and the partially captured image by the video camera 31B, and in addition to this value, between the video cameras 31A and 31B. Calculation is performed using the principle of triangulation from the distance and the focal length of the imaging lenses of the video cameras 31A and 31B.

In S106, a process of storing the distance calculated in this way in the RAM 35 in association with the small section where the candidate object is represented is performed.
In S107, the distance stored in the RAM 35 when this control process was executed last time and the distance calculated by the execution of the current control process are compared for each corresponding small section, and the section whose distance is shortened is compared. Processing for determining whether or not there is a candidate object approaching from the vehicle 30 is performed. Here, if there is a small section where the distance is short (determination result is Yes), the object represented in the image of the small section is regarded as a target object, and the process proceeds to S108. On the other hand, if there is no small section whose distance is shortened (the determination result is No), the process returns to S101 and the above-described process is repeated.

  In S <b> 108, processing is performed to acquire the position of the windshield 17 in which the target object identified in this way can be seen in the visual field of the driver 10. In this process, for example, information indicating the correspondence between the position of each small section in the captured image and the position on the windshield 17 where the driver 10 visually recognizes the landscape corresponding to the partial image included in the small section is stored in the ROM 34 in advance. It may be stored and this information may be referred to for the small section to which the object of interest belongs.

In S109, processing is performed for outputting image data for displaying the index ring 21 surrounding the visual recognition position of the windshield 17 obtained in S108 in gold, and providing an image signal to the image display element 14 via the D / A converter 36. After that, the process returns to S101 and the above-described process is repeated.
In the processing of S109, the indicator ring 21 is displayed in gold in order to make the indicator ring 21 stand out and draw attention of the driver 10, and instead, the indicator ring 21 is displayed in another color. Alternatively, the indicator ring 21 may be blinked. In addition, a warning by sound may be issued together with the display of the indicator ring 21 to alert the driver 10.

The CPU 33 in FIG. 4 performs the above-described processing, so that it is possible to identify the object of interest that the driver 10 should pay attention to. The index ring 21 for calling attention to the object of interest to 10 is displayed.
Next, FIG. 6 will be described. This figure shows a second example of the specific configuration of the driving support apparatus for carrying out the present invention.

In FIG. 6, the same components as those in the first example shown in FIG.
In the second example shown in FIG. 6 and the first example shown in FIG. 4, instead of the video cameras 31A and 31B and the A / D converter 32, the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B are replaced with the video camera 31A in the vehicle 30. And 31B.
The distance measuring sensors 41 </ b> A and 41 </ b> B are sensors that respectively measure the distance to the target object 22 located in front of the vehicle 30 and notify the CPU 33 of the measurement result.

  The distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B measure the time required for the signal to be reflected by the object of interest 22 and returned after it emits a signal (ultrasonic wave, laser light, electromagnetic wave, etc.). And the distance from the signal transmission speed to the target object 22 is calculated. Here, since the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B are arranged at positions separated from each other in the vehicle 30, the attention based on the vehicle 30 is based on the difference in distance from each of the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B to the object of interest 22. The relative position of the object 22 can be detected.

For example, an ultrasonic sensor, a laser radar, or a millimeter wave radar can be used as the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B.
Next, FIG. 7 will be described. This figure is a flowchart showing the contents of the control process performed by the CPU 33 of FIG. The CPU 33 performs this control process by executing a control program stored in the ROM 34.

When this control process is started, first, in S201, a process of acquiring the distance measured by each of the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B is performed.
In subsequent S202, it is determined whether or not there is an object closer than a predetermined distance from the vehicle 30, more specifically, whether or not the distance acquired by the processing in the previous step is shorter than the predetermined distance. Processing is performed. If there is an object near the vehicle 30 (the determination result is Yes), the process proceeds to S203. On the other hand, if there is no object near the vehicle 30 (determination result is No), the process returns to S201 and the above-described process is repeated. The object detected by the process of S202 is a candidate for the target object.

In S203, processing for detecting the relative position of the candidate object with respect to the vehicle 30 is performed as described above based on the distance measured by each of the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B acquired by the processing in S201.
In S204, the distance from the vehicle 30 to the candidate object, more specifically, for example, the arithmetic average value of the distance measured by each of the distance measuring sensors 41A and 41B acquired by the processing of S201 is stored in the RAM 35. Processing is performed.

  In S205, the distance stored in the RAM 35 when this control process was executed last time is compared with the distance from the vehicle 30 to the candidate object obtained by executing this control process, and the distance is shortened. A process for determining whether or not there is a candidate object approaching from the vehicle 30 is performed. Here, if this distance is shortened (the determination result is Yes), this candidate is regarded as an object of interest, and the process proceeds to S206. On the other hand, if the distance is not shortened (the determination result is No), the process returns to S201 and the above-described process is repeated.

  In S <b> 206, processing is performed to obtain the position on the windshield 17 where the object of interest identified in this way is visible in the visual field of the driver 10. For example, this processing may be obtained by geometrically calculating the position of the target object on the windshield 17 when the driver 10 visually recognizes the target object positioned at the relative position detected by the process of S203. .

In S207, processing is performed to output image data for displaying the index ring 21 surrounding the viewing position of the windshield 17 obtained in S206 in gold, and to provide an image signal to the image display element 14 via the D / A converter 36. After that, the process returns to S201 and the above-described process is repeated.
Also in the process of S207, the index ring 21 may be displayed in another color, or the index ring 21 may be blinked, similarly to the S109 process of FIG. In addition, a warning by sound may be issued together with the display of the indicator ring 21 to alert the driver 10.

The CPU 33 in FIG. 6 performs the above-described processing, so that it is possible to identify the object of interest that the driver 10 should pay attention to. Further, based on the identification result, the driver is placed on the windshield (windshield) 17 of the vehicle 30. The index ring 21 for calling attention to the object of interest to 10 is displayed.
In addition, the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and various improvements and changes can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.

It is a figure which shows the principle structure of the driving assistance device which implements this invention. It is a figure which shows the structure of a display part. It is a figure which shows the example of a display of the alerting parameter | index by a display part. It is a figure which shows the 1st example of the specific structure of the driving assistance device which implements this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the processing content of the control processing performed by CPU of FIG. It is a figure which shows the 2nd example of the specific structure of the driving assistance device which implements this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the processing content of the control processing performed by CPU of FIG.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Ambient condition detection part 2 Attention object identification part 3 Display part 10 Driver 11 Light source 12 Reflector 13 Lens 14 Image display element 15 Mirror 16 Projection lens 17 Windshield (windshield)
18 Combiner (Transparent reflector)
19 Virtual Image 21 Index Ring 22 Object of Interest 30 Vehicle 31A, 31B Video Camera 32 A / D Converter 33 CPU
34 ROM
35 RAM
36 D / A converter 41A, 41B Distance sensor

Claims (8)

Attention for identifying an object of interest to be noticed by the driver based on driving vision related data related to the driving vision of the driver of the vehicle acquired by the surrounding situation detecting means mounted on the vehicle and detecting the surrounding situation Object identification means;
Display means for displaying an index for alerting the driver to the attention object on the windshield of the vehicle based on an output representing an identification result by the attention object identification means;
A driving support apparatus comprising:   The object of interest identification unit is configured to identify an object of interest by receiving supply of image data as driving visual field related data from a camera as the ambient condition detection unit. The driving support device according to 1.   The object-of-interest identification means is supplied with target detection data as driving field-related data representing a target detected by an ultrasonic sensor, laser radar, or millimeter wave radar as the ambient condition detection means. The driving support device according to claim 1, wherein the driving support device is configured to identify the vehicle.   The said attention object identification means is comprised including the position calculating means which calculates | requires the position on the said windshield of the attention object visually recognized by the said driver | operator. Driving assistance device.   The display means is configured to project an index in accordance with a position corresponding to the object of interest in the driving field of view on a front windshield as the windshield. The driving support apparatus according to 1.   6. The driving support device according to claim 5, wherein the display means is configured to project an annular index as the index so as to surround the object of interest.   6. The driving support apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the display means is configured to project a golden annular index as the index so as to surround the object of interest. The driving support device according to claim 6 or 7, wherein the display means is configured to project the annular index as blinking as the index.

Images