JP5397703B2 - Vehicle control device - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a vehicle control device that changes an operation cycle of a vehicle wiper or a winker according to a driver's pulsation cycle.

  When this inventor was driving a motor vehicle at night, since it began to rain, it might operate a motor by operating a wiper. Then, the present inventor who had not felt so much sleep until then often experienced being tempted by sleepiness several times while driving.

  Although the present inventor has ever felt drowsiness during driving, such drowsiness is generally caused by external factors caused by a monotonous driving environment such as driving on a highway. This was due to internal factors such as chronic fatigue, lack of sleep, and fatigue due to prolonged driving.

  However, even when driving on a general road or driving in a healthy state, I experienced several times that, when driving at night, light rain came out and the wiper was operated to drive me to sleepiness. The present inventor obtained the knowledge that this drowsiness may be induced by a factor different from the above-mentioned factors while accumulating such experiences.

And as a result of examining the relationship between the driving time zone and the driving situation in detail regarding the cause of sleepiness, the present inventor has come to grasp the following facts.
(1) When driving at night, when light rain falls and the wiper is operated, it may be invited to drowsiness, but during daytime driving, it is not so much drowsy even in the same situation. In other words, nighttime is one of the causes of sleepiness induction.
(2) When driving at night when light rain falls and the wiper is operated, sleepiness may be invited. However, when heavy rain like the evening falls and the wiper is operated and driven, There is no invitation. That is, the operation of the wiper due to light rain is one of the causes of sleepiness induction.

Based on the above facts, the present inventor considers the cause of drowsiness as follows.
At night, switching from daytime sympathetic nerves to parasympathetic nerves slows the pulsation, which is a contraction movement such as heartbeat and pulse. In addition, when the wiper is operated in light rain, the wiper operating cycle, which is the cycle in which the wiper operates, is relatively slow.
Therefore, when light rain falls during night driving and the wiper is operated, it is considered that drowsiness is induced by the synchronization of the pulsation cycle that is slowed by the action of the parasympathetic nerve and the operation cycle of the wiper. Alternatively, when the pulsation period is close to the operation cycle of the loose wiper, the driver's pulsation is gradually increased in order to make the parasympathetic nerve more dominant by the action of the parasympathetic nerve that is dominant at night. It is thought that drowsiness is induced by synchronizing with the operation cycle of the wiper.

  Patent Document 1 discloses a technique for measuring an actual heart rate from a driving driver and controlling the vehicle based on the actual heart rate.

JP-A-6-255517

However, the invention described in Patent Document 1 controls the vehicle based on a deviation between a preset heart rate and the actual heart rate of the driver. That is, when the vehicle is controlled with respect to the driver's sleepiness, the vehicle control with respect to sleepiness is possible only when the driver's sleepiness is reflected in the heart rate.
On the other hand, as a result of intensive studies by the inventor, the cause of sleepiness that arrived is different from conventional sleepiness, and when the operation of the wiper constituting the vehicle is synchronized with or close to the pulsation cycle of the driver, the driver Invite your sleepiness. That is, the operation of the wiper induces drowsiness.
Therefore, the invention described in Patent Document 1 that controls the vehicle by the heart rate cannot prevent drowsiness caused by the operation of the wiper.

  The subject of this invention is providing the control apparatus for vehicles which prevents a driver | operator's sleepiness beforehand by shifting the operation period of each site | part which comprises vehicles, such as a wiper, with a driver | operator's pulsation period.

Means for Solving the Problems and Effects of the Invention

The vehicle control device of the present invention includes:
A pulsation measuring means for constantly measuring the pulsation of the driver's internal organs;
Pulsation period measuring means for constantly measuring the pulsation period of the driver based on pulsations measured by the pulsation measuring means;
An operation cycle control means for controlling an operation cycle of at least one of a wiper and a winker of a vehicle driven by a driver,
The operation cycle control means controls the operation cycle so that the latest pulsation cycle and the operation cycle do not coincide with each other.

The vehicle control device of the present invention controls at least one of the wiper and the winker in real time in order to control the latest pulsation cycle of the driver and the operation cycle of at least one of the wiper and the winker so as not to coincide with each other. be able to. Accordingly, the driver's pulsation cycle and the operation cycle of the wiper and the winker are not synchronized, and the driver's sleepiness induced by the operation of the wiper and the winker can be prevented.
Further, since the wiper and the winker are controlled in real time, the driver's sleepiness induced by the wiper and the winker can be prevented regardless of day and night.

  The pulsation period measuring means has noise removal pulsation generation means for generating a noise removal pulsation in which noise is removed from the measured pulsation, and always measures the pulsation period based on the noise removal beat. be able to. By removing noise from the measured pulsation, the pulsation period of the driver can be accurately measured. For this reason, when the operation cycle is controlled by the pulsation cycle erroneously measured due to noise, it is possible to prevent the driver's actual pulsation cycle from matching the operation cycle, and the driver's sleepiness due to the operation of the wiper or winker Induction can be prevented.

  Further, the operation cycle can be shorter than the pulsation cycle. In general, parasympathetic nerves are superior to sympathetic nerves at night. Therefore, the pulsation of a person (driver) becomes slow by the action of the parasympathetic nerve. Therefore, especially when the operation cycle is longer than the pulsation cycle at night, the slow paralysis of the wiper and winker may activate the dominant parasympathetic nerve and induce driver drowsiness. There is. Therefore, by making the operation cycle shorter than the pulsation cycle, the function of the parasympathetic nerve can be suppressed, and the driver's sleepiness induced by the operation of the wiper or the winker can be prevented.

  Furthermore, the pulsation cycle can be a heartbeat cycle or a pulse cycle. Therefore, by shifting the period of pulsation generated from the driver's human body and the operating period of the wiper or winker, the function of the parasympathetic nerve can be suppressed, and the driver's sleepiness can be prevented.

  On the other hand, the pulsation period measuring means can be provided in at least one of the vehicle steering and the driver's seat. The vehicle steering and the driver's seat are always in contact with a part of the driver's body when the driver drives. Therefore, the latest pulsation cycle of the driver can always be measured by providing the pulsation cycle measuring means on the steering or the driver's seat.

  The winker can have a blinker display unit that blinks and a winker sound unit that generates an operation sound. Therefore, the cycle in which the blinker blinks or the cycle in which the blinker sound is generated can be shifted from the pulsation cycle of the driver. Winkers are used frequently regardless of the weather or day and night, and because they emit sound and light, they are frequently used, and periodically stimulate the driver through vision and hearing. Therefore, it is possible to further prevent the driver from inducing sleepiness by controlling the winker display unit and the winker sound unit that are highly likely to induce sleepiness.

The block diagram which shows the schematic of the control apparatus for vehicles of this invention. The figure which showed the steering of the vehicle of FIG. The figure which showed the seat seat of the vehicle of FIG. Reference diagram showing a heartbeat waveform and a pulse waveform. The flowchart of the process sequence which prevents the induction of sleepiness. 6 is a modification of the flowchart of FIG.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, embodiments for carrying out the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic diagram of a vehicle control apparatus 1 of the present invention. The vehicle control device 1 includes a pulsation measuring unit 4 and a control ECU 14 (ECU: Electronic Control Unit).

  The pulsation measuring means 4 is a biosensor 15 that always measures the internal pulsation of the driver 2 and is provided on at least one of the steering 12 of the vehicle 6 and the seat 13 of the driver 2. The biosensor 15 includes a heart rate sensor 16 that measures the heart rate of the driver 2 and a pulse sensor 17 that measures a pulse.

When the heart rate sensor 16 is attached to the steering 12 of the vehicle 5, electrodes are attached in an arc shape along the outer peripheral edge of the rim portion of the steering 12 (FIG. 2). The driver 2 grips the rim portion to press the electrode of the rim portion, and the heart rate sensor 16 extracts a heartbeat waveform (FIG. 4) from a weak electric signal generated when the heart of the driver 2 contracts. To do.
When the heart rate sensor 16 is attached to the seat 2 of the driver 2, an echo measurement unit that performs echo measurement of the heart H of the driver 2 sitting on the seat 13 is embedded in the seat 13 (FIG. 3). The echo measurement unit includes a measurement ultrasonic transmission unit and a reflected ultrasonic reception unit. When an ultrasonic wave is incident on the heart as a detection probe from the measurement ultrasonic transmitter, a reflected wave having a Doppler effect is generated by the movement of the heart. A heartbeat waveform (FIG. 4) is extracted from this reflected wave.

When the pulse sensor 17 is attached to the steering wheel 12 of the vehicle 6, a pulse wave measurement LED device capable of optically detecting a change in the blood flow of the driver 2 is attached to a rim portion gripped by the driver 2. (FIG. 2). The LED device includes a light emitting element and a light receiving element. When infrared light is projected from the light emitting element onto the fingertip of the driver 2, the infrared light is reflected by hemoglobin in the bloodstream of the fingertip. A pulse waveform (FIG. 4) is extracted from the reflected infrared rays.
When the pulse sensor 17 is attached to the seat 2 of the driver 2, a pressure sensor that measures the pulse of the driver 2 sitting on the seat 13 is embedded in the seat 13 (FIG. 3). A pulse waveform (FIG. 4) is extracted based on the pressure sensor.

  The pulsation measuring unit 4 includes a noise removal pulsation generating unit 11. The noise-removed pulsation generation unit 11 is a noise removal circuit 18 that generates a noise-removed pulsation obtained by removing noise from the pulsation measured by the pulsation measurement unit 4 that is the biological sensor 15. The noise removal circuit 18 obtains a noise-removed heartbeat waveform and a noise-removed pulse waveform obtained by removing noise from the heartbeat waveform (FIG. 4) and the pulse waveform (FIG. 4) extracted by the heartbeat sensor 16 and the pulse sensor 17.

The control ECU 14 has a normal computer structure and is not shown in FIG. 1, but is a CPU that controls various calculations and information processing, a RAM that is a temporary storage unit as a work area of the CPU, and a nonvolatile memory that stores various information. With sex memory.
Further, the control ECU 14 includes a pulsation cycle measuring unit 5 and an operation cycle control unit 10.

  The pulsation period measuring means 5 is a pulsation period calculating section that always measures the pulsation period 3 of the driver 2 from the pulsations measured by the biological sensor 15 that is the pulsation measuring means 4. The pulsation period measuring unit 5 detects the peak P from the noise-removed heartbeat waveform and the noise-removed pulse waveform generated by the noise-removed pulsation generating unit 11, and calculates the heart rate and the pulse rate from the time interval at which the peak P appears. By detecting, the heartbeat cycle and the pulse cycle of the driver 2 are obtained.

The operation cycle control means 10 controls at least one of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 of the vehicle 6 that the driver 2 drives. Specifically, in the case of the wiper 7, the cycle of the wiper blade that reciprocates the windshield of the vehicle 6 is controlled by controlling the wiper motor M that drives the wiper 7.
On the other hand, in the case of the blinker 8, the blinking cycle in which the blinker display unit 8a blinks is controlled by controlling the relay that supplies power to the blinker display unit 8a. If the relay is a mechanical relay using bimetal, the operation sound of the winker 8 is generated periodically corresponding to the blinking cycle of the winker display section 8a. Therefore, the operation sound of the winker 8 can be controlled only by controlling the relay. Further, if the relay is an electronic relay using a semiconductor element, the operation sound of the relay is silenced. Therefore, the relay has a speaker which is a winker sound unit 8b that generates a pseudo operation sound of the winker 8, and the speaker is controlled. By doing so, the cycle of the pseudo operation sound of the winker 8 is controlled.

  Under the above configuration, the vehicle control device 1 executes a process capable of preventing the driver 2 from inducing sleepiness. The processing procedure is shown in the flowchart of FIG. Such processing procedures are programmed in advance and stored in, for example, the memory of the control ECU 14, and the control ECU 14 automatically calls and executes them.

  In the process of FIG. 5, the pulsation measuring means 4 first measures the pulsation of the driver 2 in S1, and proceeds to S2. Subsequently, in S2, the noise removal pulsation generation unit 11 of the pulsation measurement unit 4 removes noise from the pulsation measured in S1, and the process proceeds to S3. In S3, the pulsation cycle control means 5 of the control ECU 14 calculates the pulsation cycle from the noise-removed pulsation from which noise has been removed in S2, and the process proceeds to S4. Peaks can be detected with high accuracy by noise-removed beats from which noise has been removed.

  In S4, the control ECU 14 determines whether at least one of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 is operating. When at least one of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 is operating (S4: YES), the process proceeds to S5, and when neither is operating (S4: NO), the process returns to S1 and the pulsation of the driver 2 is measured. To do.

  In S5, the work cycle control means 10 of the control ECU 14 controls the operation cycle 9 so that the operation cycle 9 of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 does not coincide with the latest pulsation cycle 3 obtained in S3. Specifically, the operation cycle control means 10 controls the operation cycle 9 to be shorter than the latest pulsation cycle 3. More specifically, the operation cycle 9 is controlled to be a cycle in which the time is shortened by about 80% to 90% with respect to the pulsation cycle 3. When the operation cycle 9 is less than 80% of the pulsation cycle 3, the operation cycle 9 becomes too short, and the operation of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 becomes extremely fast, resulting in distraction of the driver 2. . If it exceeds 90%, the operation cycle 9 is not so short as the pulsation cycle 3, and the effect of preventing the driver 2 from inducing sleepiness cannot be obtained sufficiently. Therefore, when the operation cycle 9 is a cycle in which 80 to 90% of the pulsation cycle 3 is shortened, induction of sleepiness of the driver 2 can be effectively prevented.

  For example, in the case of the winker 8, the winker display unit 8a is controlled to a cycle shortened to about 80% to 90% from the pulsation cycle 3 of the driver 2, and the winker voice unit 8b performs the same control. On the other hand, when the wiper 7 is also operating, the wiper 7 performs the same control.

In S5, the work cycle control means 10 of the control ECU 14 controls the operation cycle 9 so that the operation cycle 9 of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 does not coincide with the operation cycle 9 of the wiper 7 from the latest pulsation cycle 3 obtained in S3. Return to and repeat the same process. Thereby, since the operation cycle 9 in which the wiper 7 and the winker 8 are operated can be controlled in real time based on the latest pulsation cycle 3 of the driver 2, the induction of sleepiness of the driver 2 can be prevented. .
Further, in the case where both the steering 12 and the seat 13 are provided with the biometric sensor 15, since the pulsation can always be measured by the biosensor 15 provided on the steering 12 or the seat 13, the sleepiness can be prevented in real time. Can do.

  FIG. 6 shows a modification of the flowchart of FIG. 5, in which the pulsation period measuring means 5 has arrhythmia determining means for determining whether the pulse of the driver 2 is an arrhythmia. The flowchart of FIG. 6 is obtained by adding a step of determining whether or not the pulse of the driver 2 is an arrhythmia between S2 and S3 of the flowchart of FIG. Specifically, the noise removal pulsation generation unit 11 of the pulsation measurement unit 4 removes noise from the pulsation measured in S1 in S2, and the process proceeds to S2 ′. In S2 ′, it is determined by the arrhythmia determination means whether or not the pulse of the driver 2 is an arrhythmia. When the pulse of the driver 2 is an arrhythmia (S2 ′: YES), the process returns to S1, and when the pulse of the driver 2 is not an arrhythmia (S2 ′: NO), the process proceeds to S3. Therefore, when the pulse of the driver 2 is arrhythmia, since the wiper 7 and the winker 8 are not controlled, the malfunction of the wiper 7 and the winker 8 can be prevented, and the driver 2 can be prevented from drowsiness. can do.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Control apparatus for vehicles 2 Driver 3 Pulsation cycle 4 Pulsation measurement means 5 Pulsation cycle measurement means 6 Vehicle 7 Wiper 8 Winker 8a Winker display part 8b Winker sound part 9 Operation period 10 Operation period control means 11 Noise removal pulsation Generation means 12 Steering 13 Seat seat

Claims (6)

A pulsation measuring means for constantly measuring the pulsation of the driver's internal organs;
Pulsation period measuring means for always measuring the pulsation period of the driver by the pulsation measured by the pulsation measuring means;
An operation cycle control means for controlling an operation cycle of at least one of a wiper and a winker of a vehicle driven by the driver,
The operation cycle control means controls the operation cycle so that the latest pulsation cycle and the operation cycle do not coincide with each other. The pulsation period measuring means includes noise removal pulsation generating means for generating a noise removal pulsation obtained by removing noise from the measured pulsation,
The vehicle control device according to claim 1, wherein the pulsation cycle is always measured based on the noise-removed pulsation.   The vehicle control device according to claim 1, wherein the operation cycle is shorter than the pulsation cycle.   The vehicle control device according to claim 1, wherein the pulsation cycle is a heartbeat cycle or a pulse cycle.   5. The vehicle control device according to claim 1, wherein the pulsation period measuring means is provided in at least one of a steering of the vehicle and a seat of the driver.   6. The vehicle control device according to claim 1, wherein the winker includes a blinker display unit that blinks and a winker sound unit that generates an operation sound. 7.

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