JPH06234341A - Parking assisting device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To eliminate unnecessary voice instruction in a parking assisting device giving voice instructions to guide an own vehicle into a parking position on the basis of the position relation between the parking position and the present position. CONSTITUTION:A parking ECU 14 computes a parking allowed position and a guideway for guiding a vehicle into this parking position and outputs voice instruction from a speaker 26 on the basis of comparison between the present position and the guideway so as to guide the own vehicle into the parking position. According to the time of a driver reacting to a voice message and the judgment time set according to the distance to the parking position, the parking ECU 14 judges whether or not to output the same voice message and outputs the same message again only in the case of the driver not operating within the judgment time.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a parking assist device, and more particularly to a device for guiding a parking position by voice.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Steering operation, accelerator pedal operation, brake pedal operation,
Furthermore, in manual transmission vehicles, the clutch operation is added to this, which is a complicated operation. Moreover, the driver has to perform various operations in an unnatural posture in order to see the rear, which is an operation requiring skill.
Various parking assist devices have been conventionally proposed in order to simplify such complicated operations and reduce the burden on the driver. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-31881 discloses a system for giving a voice instruction (for example, steer the steering wheel to the right to the maximum) as an aid to the driver when performing parallel parking.

[0003]

When such a voice instruction is given, the steering angle and the vehicle movement amount are always taken in order to guide the own vehicle to the parking position, and the voice instruction is given by detecting the difference from the target value. However, as long as there is a difference from the target value, the same message will be repeated any number of times, which is a problem for the driver.

In particular, a driver who is not familiar with driving, in general, operates the steering wheel carefully while surely grasping the surroundings. Therefore, it takes time until the target value is reached after the voice message is output. The same message will continue to be sent and the driver may feel uncomfortable.

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems of the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to provide a parking assist device capable of reliably guiding a vehicle to a parking position without giving an unnecessary voice instruction. Especially.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, a parking assist device according to claim 1 is a parking position detecting means, a current position detecting means, and a guidance for guiding a vehicle to a parking position. A calculation means for calculating a road, a voice instruction means for giving a steering instruction to the driver based on the guide path and the current position; and a case where the driver does not perform a steering operation within a predetermined time after the steering instruction is given. As long as it has an instruction control means for issuing the same steering instruction again. Further, in order to achieve the above object, the parking assist device according to claim 2 is the parking assist device according to claim 1, wherein the predetermined time is changed according to a driving characteristic of a driver and a distance to the parking position. It is characterized by having an adjusting means for controlling.

[0007]

In the above construction, in the parking assist system according to claim 1, the driver hears the voice instruction this time if the driver does not perform any steering operation within a predetermined time after the voice instruction. Then, the same voice instruction is given again. In other cases, that is, when the driver performs the steering operation within a predetermined time, the same voice instruction is prohibited. In this way, the instruction control means determines whether or not the same voice instruction is given based on the presence or absence of the steering operation within a predetermined time. Therefore, even when the driver carefully performs the steering operation, unnecessary voice is not output, and the driver It does not cause any discomfort.

Further, in the parking assistance device according to the second aspect,
The determination time for determining whether or not the adjusting means gives another voice instruction is changed according to the driving characteristics of the driver and the distance to the parking position. As described above, some drivers may perform a careful steering operation, and another driver may perform a quick steering operation. Therefore, by adjusting the determination time according to the steering characteristic peculiar to the driver, it is possible to give a voice instruction that matches the driver. Furthermore, when the vehicle approaches the parking position, a quicker and more reliable steering operation is required. Therefore, the shorter the distance from the parking position, the shorter the determination time and the earlier voice instruction.
The vehicle can be reliably guided to the parking position.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the parking assist system of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of the configuration of this embodiment. A pair of CCD cameras are vertically arranged at the rear of the vehicle to form a CCD area sensor 10. Based on the image obtained by the CCD area sensor, the electronic control unit ECU 12 for distance measurement calculates the distance to an object existing in a predetermined direction. The calculated position of the obstacle is supplied to the parking ECU 14. In addition, the steering angle sensor 16 detects the rotation angle of the steering wheel and uses this value for parking E
Supply to CU14. The wheel speed sensor 18 detects the speed of the vehicle based on the rotation speed of the wheels and supplies it to the ECU 14. The shift position sensor 20 detects the current shift position,
Supply to the ECU 14. Further, a parallel parking selection switch 22 is provided, and either reverse parking or parallel parking can be selected. Further, a photographing range instruction switch 24 is provided, and the photographing range of the CCD area sensor 10 can be switched to only the right side or the left side of the vehicle center axis. Based on the input signals as described above, the parking ECU 14 calculates a parking available position and calculates a guide path for guiding the vehicle to this parking position. Then, based on the comparison between the current position and the guide path, the speaker 26 outputs a voice instruction to guide the vehicle to the parking position.

2 to 4 show the ECU in this embodiment.
A processing flowchart of 14 is shown. First, it is determined whether or not the previous timer learning value is 0 (S101).
Although the timer learning value will be described later, since it is set to 0 in the initial state, the timer initial value N is next set to n seconds (for example, 3 seconds) (S102). Then, after initializing the variables k, c, and i (S104), a parking operation plan is created (S105). Note that these variables k,
c and i are the distance correction variable, the timer count variable,
Indicates the message number. As described above, the parking operation plan is created by the parking ECU 14 based on the initial position of the vehicle and the detected parking position, and the target steering angle, the target coordinates, and the target shift position are determined. After creating the parking plan, the vehicle state, that is, the current steering angle, the current shift position, and the current position are fetched into the parking ECU 14 (S106). After the state of the vehicle is captured, the parking ECU 14 calculates the difference θ between the target steering angle and the current steering angle θ1 and stores it in the RAM (S107). And R in advance
A message number i corresponding to the difference θ is selected from the numbered voice messages stored in the OM (S108). Next, it is determined whether the timer has passed N × k seconds (S109). If this time has not yet been reached, it is further determined whether the number of the previously output message is the same as the message number i selected this time (S110). If the previous message and the message selected this time are different, the timer counter C is incremented by 1 to start the timer (S11
1), the selected voice message is output via the speaker 26 (S112). Then, the number of this output voice message is stored in the RAM for the next matching (S113), and the current steering angle θ2 is fetched (S13).
114). On the other hand, when the timer has not yet reached the predetermined time N × k and the previous message and the current message are the same, the current steering angle fetching process is performed without outputting a voice message again. (S11
0, S114).

After the current steering angle θ2 is captured, it is determined whether or not the driver has properly reacted to the output voice message. This determination is made based on whether or not the magnitude of the difference between the steering angle θ1 before outputting the voice message and the steering angle θ2 after outputting the voice message is a predetermined value β or more (S
115). If the difference is less than or equal to the predetermined value, it is determined that the steering has not been performed, and the process returns to S107 and thereafter.
Then, when the timer has passed N × k seconds without being steered by the driver, the timer counter C is incremented, the timer is reset and restarted, and the same voice message is output to prompt the driver for steering. (S107-S11
3). On the other hand, when the difference is large and it is determined that the driver has steered, the timer count value is returned to the previous value (C = C-1), and the determination time N is N = C × N + (of the final timer. (Remaining value) (S116). Here, the timer counter C indicates that the driver does not respond to the voice message,
Since the value is sequentially incremented when xk has elapsed, the faster the driver's response to the voice message, the smaller the value of C, and the more gentle and careful the steering with respect to the voice message, the larger the value of C becomes. Therefore, by adjusting the value of the timer initial value N according to C in this way, the value of N becomes small for a driver who operates quickly, and the value of N becomes large for a cautious driver. So
It is possible to prevent the same voice message from being frequently output depending on the driver.

After the timer initial value N is adjusted according to the driving characteristics of the driver, the timer is restarted (S11
7) It is determined whether or not the current steering angle θ2 is the target steering angle (S118). If it is not the target steering angle θ2, the processing from S107 is performed again, and if it is the target steering angle, the timer is stopped (S119) and a movement message is output (S120). The driver will move backward at the target steering angle in accordance with this movement message. Then, after outputting the movement message, the current position is detected (S12
1), the variable k is calculated as k = (current position) / (initial position) (S122). Here, the current position and the initial position are represented by the distance from the parking position, so that the value of k becomes smaller as the vehicle approaches the parking position. As is clear from the above-mentioned determination time N × k, k is a function of adjusting the determination time according to the position of the own vehicle, that is, a function of a distance correction coefficient, and the determination time is set to be smaller as the position is closer to the parking position. Means This is because as the vehicle gets closer to the parking position, various obstacles are present, so that the voice message needs to be output earlier, and the determination time is set smaller accordingly. However, if the judgment time is too small,
On the contrary, since it becomes impossible to operate the voice message with a sufficient margin, the lower limit value α is set, and when k is less than or equal to this lower limit value, k is set to α (S123).
-S124). Then, it is determined whether or not the detected current position has reached the final target position, that is, the parking position (S
125), if the final target position has not yet been reached, it is further determined whether or not the intermediate target position has been reached (S12).
8) If it reaches, a stop message is output (S12).
9), the process after S106 is continued. If it has not reached, the process moves to S121 and thereafter.

On the other hand, when the vehicle reaches the final target position, an assist end message is output (S126), and N
The content of is stored as a learning value (S127). Therefore,
When the system is started next time, the stored value of N is set as the timer initial value (S103), and the determination time can be set according to the driving characteristics of the driver.

As described above, in this embodiment, the driving characteristics of the driver, that is, the time during which the driver reacts to the voice message,
And the judgment time set according to the distance to the parking position determines whether to output the same voice message, and the same message is output again only when the driver does not operate within the judgment time. Can concentrate on parking without listening to unnecessary messages and can park reliably.

[0015]

As described above, according to the parking assistance device of the present invention, it is possible to reliably guide the vehicle to the parking position without giving an unnecessary voice instruction.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a processing flowchart of the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a processing flowchart of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a processing flowchart of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 CCD area sensor 12 ECU for distance measurement 14 ECU for parking 26 Speaker

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A parking assist device for issuing a voice instruction to guide a vehicle to a parking position based on a positional relationship between the parking position and the current position, the parking position detecting means, the current position detecting means, and the parking position. A calculation means for calculating a guide path for guiding the vehicle to the vehicle, a voice instruction means for giving a steering instruction to the driver based on the guide path and the current position, and within a predetermined time after the steering instruction is given. A parking assist device comprising: an instruction control unit that gives the same steering instruction again only when the driver does not perform a steering operation. 2. The parking assistance device according to claim 1, further comprising an adjusting unit that changes the predetermined time according to a driving characteristic of a driver and a distance to the parking position.