JP2016206834A - On-vehicle warning device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an on-vehicle warning device capable of encouraging a following vehicle to perform proper overtaking, and reducing power consumption.SOLUTION: A following vehicle determination part 11 is configured to determine the presence/absence of the following vehicle on the basis of imaging information of the rear of a vehicle. An oncoming vehicle determination part 12 is configured to, when it is determined that the following vehicle is present by the following vehicle determination part 11, determine the presence/absence of an oncoming vehicle and a degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle on the basis of the imaging information of the front of the vehicle. A level determination part 13 is configured to determine a level to be noticed when overtaking the vehicle on the basis of the determination result of the oncoming vehicle determination part 12. An output control part 14 is configured to cause an output part 6 which outputs information to the following vehicle to output the level to be noticed determined by the level determination part 13.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

  The present invention relates to an in-vehicle warning device that is mounted on a large vehicle such as a large bus and presents a warning level to a succeeding vehicle when overtaking the host vehicle.

When a public transportation vehicle such as a large bus stops at a stop, it is difficult for the following vehicle to see the situation of the oncoming lane because it is obstructed by the large bus and the forward view becomes worse. For this reason, depending on the situation, it could not be overtaken, causing traffic jams.
On the other hand, in the system described in Patent Document 1, an information providing device such as an LED display board is provided at the rear of a large vehicle, and an oncoming vehicle is used by using a monitoring camera device, a laser device, a millimeter wave laser device, or the like. When an oncoming vehicle is detected, information indicating “there is an oncoming vehicle” or “no overtaking” that can be easily recognized by the driver of the following vehicle is displayed on the information providing apparatus.

JP 2002-178863 A

However, in actual traffic conditions, it may be an obstacle to smooth traffic if the presence or absence of an oncoming vehicle or the possibility of overtaking is indicated.
For example, when the driving skill of the driver of the following vehicle is high, even if “oncoming vehicle” or “passing prohibition” is presented, sufficient overtaking is possible depending on the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle.
In this case, if the driver of the succeeding vehicle does not overtake with the content presented by the preceding vehicle, it will be a cause of unnecessary traffic congestion.

  Moreover, in the system described in patent document 1, presentation to a following vehicle is performed irrespective of the presence or absence of a following vehicle. That is, even when there is no subsequent vehicle to be presented, useless presentation is performed, and there is a problem that power consumption is always increased.

  SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide an in-vehicle warning device capable of promoting appropriate overtaking for a succeeding vehicle and reducing power consumption.

  The in-vehicle warning device according to the present invention includes a following vehicle determination unit, an oncoming vehicle determination unit, a level determination unit, and an output control unit. The subsequent vehicle determination unit determines whether there is a subsequent vehicle based on imaging information behind the vehicle. The oncoming vehicle determination unit determines the presence or absence of an oncoming vehicle and the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle based on imaging information in front of the vehicle when the subsequent vehicle determination unit determines that there is a subsequent vehicle. A level determination part determines the level which should be careful when overtaking a vehicle based on the determination result of an oncoming vehicle determination part. The output control unit causes the output unit that outputs information to the following vehicle to output the level to be noted determined by the level determination unit.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the following vehicle can be overtaken according to the level to be noted when overtaking the preceding vehicle. Further, even if the vehicle stops, if the following vehicle does not exist, the level of caution is not presented, so unnecessary presentation is eliminated and power consumption can be reduced.

It is a block diagram which shows the structure of the vehicle-mounted warning apparatus which concerns on Embodiment 1 of this invention. FIG. 1A is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of the in-vehicle warning device, and FIG. 1B is a diagram showing a birdware configuration of the in-vehicle warning device. It is a flowchart which shows operation | movement of the vehicle-mounted warning apparatus of FIG.

Embodiment 1 FIG.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention. FIG. 1A is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of the in-vehicle warning device 1, and FIG. 1B is a diagram showing a birdware configuration of the in-vehicle warning device 1.
The vehicle on which the in-vehicle warning device 1 is mounted is a relatively large vehicle in which the driver of the succeeding vehicle cannot sufficiently see the situation of the oncoming vehicle on the overtaking side. For example, a large bus that stops temporarily at a bus stop, a courier truck that may stop by the road for loading and unloading luggage, and a construction vehicle that stops by the road for road construction.
Hereinafter, the in-vehicle warning device 1 mounted on the large bus will be described.

Further, as shown in FIG. 1A, the in-vehicle warning device 1 includes a map data acquisition unit 2, a GPS (Global Positioning System) reception unit 3, a front camera 4, a rear camera 5, and an output mounted on a large bus. Connect to unit 6.
The map data acquisition unit 2 acquires map data including the current position of the large bus. The map data acquisition unit 2 may access the map database to acquire the ground data, but may be the map database itself.
The GPS receiver 3 acquires position information of the large bus. For example, the current position of the large bus is measured based on GPS information received from a GPS satellite.

The front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 embody the imaging unit of the present invention. The front camera 4 images the front of the large bus, and the rear camera 5 images the rear of the large bus.
The output unit 6 is an output device that outputs information to the following vehicle. For example, it is possible to use a display device that displays destination information and the like disposed at the rear of the large bus, an LED lamp that is arranged so as to be visible from the driver of the following vehicle, and the like. Moreover, the display part of the vehicle-mounted apparatus mounted in the succeeding vehicle may be sufficient.

The in-vehicle warning device 1 includes a start processing unit 10, a following vehicle determination unit 11, an oncoming vehicle determination unit 12, a level determination unit 13, and an output control unit 14 as functional configurations.
The activation processing unit 10 activates the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 at a timing when the large bus stops, and stops the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 at a timing when the large bus travels. For example, it is determined that it is the timing when the large bus travels when the vehicle speed of the large bus is detected.

The timing at which the large bus stops is determined, for example, by the distance between the large bus and the bus stop.
When the distance between the large bus and the bus stop is less than the threshold from the position of the bus stop in the map data acquired by the map data acquisition unit 2 and the current position of the large bus measured by the GPS receiver 3, It is determined that it is time to stop the bus.

  The timing at which the large bus stops may be determined by the time at which the large bus arrives at the bus stop. For example, the arrival schedule of the large bus arriving at the bus stop from the position of the bus stop in the map data acquired by the map data acquisition unit 2, the current position of the large bus measured by the GPS receiving unit 3, and the vehicle speed of the large bus Calculate time. Then, it is determined that it is time to stop the large bus when it is a predetermined time before the estimated arrival time.

  The following vehicle determination unit 11 determines the presence or absence of the following vehicle based on the imaging information behind the large bus imaged by the rear camera 5. For example, the succeeding vehicle determination unit 11 performs image analysis such as pattern recognition on the camera image behind the large bus to determine the presence or absence of the following vehicle.

The oncoming vehicle determination unit 12 determines the presence or absence of an oncoming vehicle and the approaching degree of the oncoming vehicle based on imaging information in front of the large bus imaged by the front camera 4.
For example, the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12 sequentially inputs camera images in front of a large bus and performs image analysis such as pattern recognition on the camera images to determine whether there is an oncoming vehicle. Further, the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle is determined based on the amount of change in the size of the oncoming vehicle on the camera image within a certain time.

Based on the determination result of the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12, the level determination unit 13 determines a level to be noted when the following vehicle passes the large bus.
The level to be noted when the following vehicle overtakes a large bus does not indicate whether overtaking is possible or not, but is a level to call attention when overtaking, based on a driver with an average driving skill. Is set.
For example, the overtaking time from the time when the succeeding vehicle enters the opposite lane to the time when the vehicle returns to the original lane is obtained with reference to a driver having an average driving skill. Then, based on the distance between the oncoming vehicle and the large bus determined by the oncoming vehicle determining unit 12, the distance between the oncoming vehicle and the overtaking vehicle approaching in this overtaking time is sequentially obtained. These distances are compared with a distance threshold value set in advance for each attention level, and the levels to be careful when the succeeding vehicle overtakes the large bus are sequentially determined.

  The output control unit 14 causes the output unit 6 to output a level to be noted when the following vehicle passes the large bus. For example, when the output unit 6 is an LED lamp disposed at the rear of the large bus, the output control unit 14 turns on the LED lamp with a luminescent color that is different for each level to be noted. When the output unit 6 is a display device disposed at the rear of the large bus, the output control unit 14 displays characters, figures, light emission patterns, and the like indicating levels to be noted.

Further, when the output unit 6 is a display unit of an in-vehicle device mounted on a subsequent vehicle, the output control unit 14 transmits display information indicating a level to be noted to the subsequent vehicle by inter-vehicle communication to display the in-vehicle device. Display on the screen. As a vehicle-mounted device for the following vehicle, a navigation device, a display-integrated audio device, and the like can be considered.
In addition, as the inter-vehicle communication, DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) is used.

As shown in FIG. 1B, the activation processing unit 10, the following vehicle determination unit 11, the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12, the level determination unit 13, and the output control unit 14 execute a program stored in the memory 101 by the processor 100. This is realized.
A plurality of processors and a plurality of memories may execute the above functions in cooperation.

Next, the operation will be described.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing the operation of the in-vehicle warning device 1 and shows the operation when the large bus stops at the bus stop on the one-lane road.
The activation processing unit 10 stops the large bus at the bus stop based on the map data acquired by the map data acquisition unit 2 and the position information of the large bus received by the GPS reception unit 3 while the in-vehicle warning device 1 is activated. It is confirmed whether it is a timing to perform (step ST1).
When the large bus does not stop at the bus stop (step ST1; NO), the process of step ST1 is repeated.

  On the other hand, when it is time for the large bus to stop at the bus stop (step ST1; YES), the activation processing unit 10 activates the front camera 4 and activates the rear camera 5 (step ST2). Thus, since it is not necessary to always start the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5, power consumption can be reduced.

Next, the subsequent vehicle determination unit 11 determines whether there is a subsequent vehicle based on the camera image behind the large bus acquired from the rear camera 5 (step ST3).
Here, if it is determined that there is no vehicle that can be a succeeding vehicle, that is, a vehicle following the large bus or a vehicle approaching from the rear of the large bus (step ST3; NO), the process returns to step ST1.

  When the succeeding vehicle determining unit 11 determines that there is a following vehicle (step ST3; YES), the oncoming vehicle determining unit 12 determines that the oncoming vehicle is based on the camera images in front of the large bus sequentially obtained from the front camera 4. And the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle is determined (step ST4). The determination result of the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12 is output to the level determination unit 13.

When there is an oncoming vehicle (step ST4; YES), the level determination unit 13 determines a level to be noted when the succeeding vehicle overtakes the large bus according to the approaching degree of the oncoming vehicle (step ST5). For example, the level to be watched for is determined according to the distance between the oncoming vehicle and the overtaking vehicle approaching within the overtaking time determined in advance.
In addition, weights are assigned to the levels to which attention should be paid by using peripheral information such as the location of the large bus, the topography around the stop of the large bus, weather, time information such as day or night, road surface conditions, vehicle speed of oncoming vehicles, etc. May be. If the vehicle speed of the oncoming vehicle exceeds the threshold and the forward visibility is poor due to fog or the like, the level determined as described above is weighted to raise the level to be alerted.

When there is no oncoming vehicle (step ST4; NO), the level determination unit 13 determines that the level to be noted is “low” (step ST6). In this case, since there is no oncoming vehicle in the past, it is determined that overtaking is possible. However, in reality, there is a possibility that there are objects of caution other than oncoming vehicles. For example, a pedestrian trying to cross a road in front of a large bus can be considered.
Therefore, in the present invention, an attention level is presented in order to alert the driver of the following vehicle when overtaking. However, since it is not necessary to pay attention to the oncoming vehicle, it is determined that the state is at a low level.

The output control unit 14 causes the output unit 6 to output the level to be noted determined by the level determination unit 13 as described above (step ST7).
For example, when the output unit 6 is an LED lamp disposed at the rear of the large bus, the output control unit 14 turns on the LED lamp with a luminescent color that is different for each level to be noted.
If there are three levels of attention, high, medium, and low, the LED lamp is lit in blue if the attention level is low. Further, as the oncoming vehicle approaches, the emission color of the LED lamp is changed from yellowish green to yellow and further to the attention color red.
In this way, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to the level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle ahead.

In addition, although the road of one side one lane was described so far, this invention is applicable even if it is more than one side two lane. In the case of two or more lanes on one side, in addition to oncoming vehicles, care must be taken when overtaking whether the vehicle approaching from the right overtaking lane and the right lane are overtaking prohibited lanes. A vehicle approaching from the right lane can be detected by the rear camera 5. The overtaking prohibited lane can be confirmed from the road data.
For example, when the road on which the large vehicle travels is two lanes or more on one side, the succeeding vehicle determination unit 11 also determines whether there is a vehicle approaching from the right lane and the degree of approach of this vehicle.
The oncoming vehicle determination unit 12 also determines whether or not the right lane is an overtaking prohibited lane.
Furthermore, in addition to the above-described level determination based on the oncoming vehicle, the level determination unit 13 follows the presence / absence of a vehicle approaching from the right lane, the degree of approach of the vehicle, and whether the right lane is an overtaking prohibited lane. A level to be watched when the driver of the vehicle overtakes the vehicle ahead is determined.
Even with this configuration, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to the level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle ahead.

  Further, even when the activation processing unit 10 is omitted, by not presenting a level to be noted when it is determined that there is no subsequent vehicle, unnecessary presentation is eliminated, and power consumption can be reduced. Therefore, the in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1 only needs to include at least the configuration excluding the activation processing unit 10 in FIG.

As described above, the in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1 includes the following vehicle determination unit 11, the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12, the level determination unit 13, and the output control unit 14.
The subsequent vehicle determination unit 11 determines the presence or absence of the subsequent vehicle based on the imaging information behind the vehicle.
When the succeeding vehicle determining unit 11 determines that there is a following vehicle, the oncoming vehicle determining unit 12 determines the presence or absence of the oncoming vehicle and the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle based on imaging information in front of the vehicle.
Based on the determination result of the oncoming vehicle determination unit 12, the level determination unit 13 determines a level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle.
The output control unit 14 causes the output unit 6 that outputs information to the following vehicle to output the level to be watched determined by the level determination unit 13.
By configuring in this way, it is possible to determine whether the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to the level to be noted when overtaking the preceding vehicle.
Further, even if the vehicle stops, if the following vehicle does not exist, the level of caution is not presented, so there is no unnecessary presentation and power consumption can be reduced.

  The in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1 activates the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 at a timing when the vehicle stops, and stops the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 at a timing when the vehicle travels. Is provided. With this configuration, the power consumption of the front camera 4 and the rear camera 5 can be reduced.

  Furthermore, in the in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1, the output unit 6 is, for example, a lamp disposed at the rear of the vehicle. The output control unit 14 turns on the lamp with an emission color indicating a level to be noted. By configuring in this way, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to a level to be noted when overtaking the preceding vehicle.

Furthermore, in the in-vehicle warning device 1 according to the first embodiment, the output unit 6 is a display unit disposed at the rear of the vehicle, for example. The output control unit 14 causes the display unit to display a level to be noted.
Even with this configuration, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to a level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle ahead.

Furthermore, in the in-vehicle warning device 1 according to Embodiment 1, the output unit 6 is a display unit mounted on, for example, a succeeding vehicle. The output control unit 14 transmits the level to which attention should be paid to the subsequent vehicle, and displays the level on the display unit mounted on the subsequent vehicle.
Even with this configuration, it is possible to determine whether or not the driver of the succeeding vehicle can be overtaken according to a level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle ahead.

Although Embodiment 1 demonstrated the case where the vehicle-mounted warning apparatus 1 was mounted in the large bus, you may mount in large vehicles other than a large bus.
For example, in the case of the in-vehicle warning device 1 mounted on the courier truck, the activation processing unit 10 determines the timing at which the courier truck stops with the hazard lamp of the courier truck blinking.

  In the present invention, any component of the embodiment can be modified or any component of the embodiment can be omitted within the scope of the invention.

  DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 In-vehicle warning device, 2 Map data acquisition part, 3 GPS receiving part, 4 Front camera, 5 Back camera, 6 Output part, 10 Starting process part, 11 Subsequent vehicle determination part, 12 Oncoming vehicle determination part, 13 Level determination part, 14 Output control unit, 100 processor, 101 memory.

Claims (5)

A subsequent vehicle determination unit that determines the presence or absence of a subsequent vehicle based on imaging information behind the vehicle;
An oncoming vehicle determination unit that determines the presence or absence of an oncoming vehicle and the degree of approach of the oncoming vehicle based on imaging information ahead of the vehicle when the subsequent vehicle determining unit determines that there is the following vehicle;
Based on the determination result of the oncoming vehicle determination unit, a level determination unit that determines a level to be noted when overtaking the vehicle;
An in-vehicle warning device comprising: an output control unit that outputs the level to be noted determined by the level determination unit to an output unit that outputs information to the following vehicle.   2. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an activation processing unit that activates an imaging unit that images the front and rear of the vehicle when the vehicle stops and stops the imaging unit when the vehicle travels. In-vehicle warning device. The output unit is a lamp disposed at the rear of the vehicle,
The in-vehicle warning device according to claim 1, wherein the output control unit turns on the lamp with an emission color corresponding to the level to be noted. The output unit is a display unit disposed at the rear of the vehicle,
The in-vehicle warning device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the output control unit displays the level to be noted on the display unit. The output unit is a display unit mounted on the following vehicle,
The said output control part transmits the said level which should be careful to the said succeeding vehicle, and displays it on the display part of the said succeeding vehicle, The any one of Claims 1-3 characterized by the above-mentioned. In-vehicle warning device.

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