JPH10166971A - Rear and side part obstacle alarm device for vehicle - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To allow to decide the lane conversion and the like when a turn lever is not used, without increasing the cost, and by, preventing the increase of the component elements. SOLUTION: By a scanning type laser radar 12 as an article detecting means installed to the rear bumper of a vehicle, a specific area is set at the rear and side part of the vehicle, and when a following vehicle enters in the specific area, and the relative speed is increased an umber lamp 16 is lighted at first, and when the relative position in the lateral direction exceeds a specific value under such a condition, it is decided to be a lane conversion or the like, and a red lamp 17 and a buzzer 18 are driven by a controller 15, so as to output an alarm.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention is used by being mounted on a vehicle and judging the safety of the running behavior in advance while grasping the relative relationship between the own vehicle and the surrounding running objects to pay attention to the driver. More specifically, the present invention relates to a rear-side alarm device for a vehicle that covers a rear-side region of the vehicle in which a driver's visual attention is reduced.

[0002]

As shown in Prior Art FIG. 9, when consider the driver visibility in the vehicle C _1, during running the driver directly vision zone a1 exceeding slightly 180 ° without much shift his eye-gaze, room mirror The view area a2 can be secured, and the left rear side area a3 and the right rear side area a4 can be secured through the left and right door mirrors by slightly shifting the line of sight.
Can secure a certain field of view. In the case of securing the view with the door mirror, the line of sight must be shifted slightly, so when changing lanes or turning left or right, which requires instantaneous accurate judgment of the situation, the operation tends to be delayed or neglected. It is. Therefore, in FIG. 9, regions indicated by hatching are directly compared in view area a1 and rearview mirror field of view region a2 visual attention fall area (including the blind spot), and other vehicles such as a following vehicle C ₂ It is difficult to quickly and accurately understand the relative relationship between the two, and the region has a high potential for accident occurrence. Although it is possible to visually check the surroundings of the host vehicle and check the surrounding conditions, this is not only a burdensome operation for the driver today when seat belts are obligated, but such an operation also stabilizes the host vehicle. It may hinder driving.

In order to cope with such a problem, in recent years, there has been proposed an alarm device which supplements a driver's attention by automating monitoring of a region where visual attention is lost and assists in improving accident avoidance ability. ing. This is to capture the intrusion of an object such as a following vehicle into the area where visual attention is reduced by means of radio wave radar or the like, and to alert the driver by warning when attempting to change lanes etc. However, in this case, the determination of the occurrence of an alarm is generally made based on the input of a turn signal by operating a turn lever.
However, depending on the driver's character and the environment or circumstances at that time, the driver may suddenly reach an act of changing lanes without operating the turn lever.In such a case, an object such as a following vehicle enters the dangerous area. Even if it does, an alarm will not be issued, and an alarm system developed to avoid accidents such as contact will not make any sense. For this reason, in this type of alarm device, it is a major problem how to determine whether to change lanes or the like without operating the turn lever. From such a viewpoint, an alarm device that detects a steering torque with a torque sensor and determines lane change or the like based on the detected value has been proposed. There has also been proposed an alarm device that captures a rear-view image by a video camera, grasps a danger situation from a vector of the camera image, and determines a lane change or the like by a gyro.

[0004]

However, in the system using an expensive steering torque sensor or gyro only for determining when changing lanes or the like without operating the turn lever as in the above-mentioned prior art, the entire alarm device is not used. This will increase the cost and complicate the device configuration.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a rear-side obstacle warning device for a vehicle which can determine whether to change lanes or the like without operating the turn lever without increasing the cost of the device and the number of components. Provision is its purpose.

[0006]

Means for Solving the Problems A conventional object detecting means (sensor) for detecting an approaching object such as a following vehicle in the front-rear direction, that is, a displacement amount in the traveling direction, is used but is not used in a lateral direction, that is, a vehicle. The gist of the present invention is to detect a displacement amount corresponding to the operation of the turn lever using a function of detecting the displacement amount in the width direction, and use this as a trigger of an alarm. More specifically, according to the first aspect of the present invention, in a rear-side obstacle warning device for a vehicle that detects approach of an object located on the rear side of the vehicle and warns the driver, the object is detected. Object detection means, lateral relative displacement state calculation means for calculating left-right relative information between the vehicle and the object from the output of the object detection means, and the object approaches the vehicle from the output of the object detection means Approach determination means for determining that the vehicle and the object have approached from an output of the lateral relative displacement state calculation means and an output of the approach determination means; and And an alarm generating means for generating an alarm based on an output from the determining means. According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the configuration according to the first aspect, the lane change determination unit determines that a lateral movement amount within a predetermined time from the lateral relative displacement state calculation unit exceeds a predetermined value. It is configured that the approach is determined. In the invention according to claim 3, claim 1 or 2
In the configuration described above, the approach determining means determines that the object has approached the vehicle by detecting the object by the object detecting means. According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the configuration of the first aspect, the lane change determination unit determines the approach when the relative position in the left-right direction from the lateral relative displacement state calculation unit is equal to or smaller than a predetermined value. , Is adopted. According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the configuration of the first aspect, the approach determining means determines the approach when the relative distance to the object is equal to or less than a set value. According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the configuration of the first aspect, the approach determining means determines the approach when the relative speed with respect to the object is equal to or higher than a set value.

[0007]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. The rear-side obstacle warning device for the vehicle is shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 2, a scanning type laser radar 12 as an object detecting means is provided at substantially the center of a rear bumper 11 of a vehicle 10, and its radar driving circuit 13
Is output to a display device 14 and a controller 15 provided at an appropriate place such as an instrument panel.
Amber color lamp 16 (ambe) as a primary alarm
r: corresponding to yellow traffic light), a red light 17 as a danger warning and a buzzer 18 are driven. The amber color light 16 and the red light 17 are provided symmetrically in the so-called inner delta zone 191 of the left and right door mirrors 19 (FIG. 4 shows a part of the left door mirror) of the vehicle 10, and the buzzer 18 Equipped in places.

The scanning laser radar 12 includes a casing 121 integrally attached to an upper wall member 111 of the rear bumper 11, a transmitting / receiving circuit section 122 supported at a lower portion in the casing 121, and a transmitting / receiving circuit section 122. A transmitting / receiving unit 123 connected and disposed above the mirror, and a mirror 124 facing the transmitting / receiving unit 123 at an upper side and rotating while maintaining a 45 ° inclination angle with respect to a horizontal plane
And the mirror 12 supported by the casing 121 and
4 is provided with a mirror drive unit 125 that supports the mirror 4 around a vertical line N. Here, the laser radar is mounted on the upper part of the rear bumper, but may be mounted so as to protrude from the rear wall as long as the position does not limit the scanning range of the laser radar. The transmission / reception unit 123 is driven by the transmission / reception circuit unit 122, emits a laser beam at predetermined intervals, and receives a reflected wave. The transmission / reception direction is regulated in the horizontal direction by the rotation direction of the mirror 124, and the transmission / reception direction (rotation angle θ) in the horizontal direction changes sequentially according to the rotation position of the mirror 124. A transparent protective plate d for transmitting laser light is provided in front of the mirror 124 in the casing 121.

The rotation speed of the mirror 124 and the transmission / reception circuit 1
The transmission / reception cycle of the mirror 124 is appropriately set. In the present embodiment, the mirror 124 is controlled so that the rotation angle θ, which is the transmission / reception angle, changes by a unit rotation angle in the horizontal direction for each control cycle Δt of the transmission / reception circuit unit 122. The rotation speed has been set. Also,
As shown in FIG. 6, the scan control mode of the transmission / reception circuit unit 122 is set such that the distance L to the object (the following vehicle C ₂ ) can be captured for each unit rotation angle in the scan area e0 180 ° behind the vehicle. . Radar drive circuit 1
3 is the rotation angle θ _n (= θ _n-1 + Δθ) and the distance Ln at that time
｛= {× (X _n ² + Y _n ² )} is obtained for each unit rotation angle, and the position (X _n , Y _n ) of the object behind it is calculated. Controller 15
Is always output. Further, as shown in FIG. 5, the radar drive circuit 13 generates position information (reflection positions of laser light) p of many objects obtained by one scanning operation.
A representative line x in the vehicle width direction and a representative line y in the traveling direction are calculated by averaging processing from 1, p2... Pn, and a point po (Xo, Yo) located at the intersection of both lines is set as a representative point. Then, this data is output to the display device 14 and the controller 15.

The display device 14 includes a display circuit section 141 to which the output of the radar driving circuit 13 is input, and the display circuit section 141.
And a display unit 142 such as a CRT driven by the. The display circuit unit 141 normally controls the display of the set predetermined areas (warning areas) E1, E2 and the like as shown in FIG. Further, displayed sequentially □ point to the corresponding position on the display screen the position of the rear of the object at each rotation angle theta _n, so the presence of an object that the driver has entered the predetermined area can be easily perceived I have. Further, the vehicle speed V2 of the following vehicle output from the controller 15 is numerically displayed at the center of the display unit 142. The predetermined areas E1 and E2 are automatically set by the controller 15, and are shown in FIG.
As shown in (1), when there are lanes on the left and right of the host vehicle, a rectangular area for a four-wheeled vehicle is set. When the host vehicle is traveling in the left lane, only the left side is set to a small area for a motorcycle or the like. Here, only the left side is set as a small area,
When traveling on the right side, a small area may be set on the right side. Note that the size of the rectangular area for a four-wheeled vehicle is such that a vehicle traveling in an adjacent lane cannot be recognized by the rearview mirror in the front-rear direction of the vehicle (about 10 m), and a road width (5 m in the vehicle width direction). ), The size of the rectangular area for motorcycles is determined by the distance (about 5 m) at which the motorcycle cannot be seen by the rearview mirror in the front-rear direction of the vehicle, and by the inner wheel difference when turning right or left in the vehicle width direction. Range affected by entanglement (2
m).

The main part of the controller 15 is constituted by a microcomputer, and an alarm control program, which will be described later, is stored and processed in a ROM (not shown), and its input / output circuit (not shown) has a radar driving circuit 13. , A position (X _n , Y _n ) signal of the object behind is input. As shown in FIG. 1, the controller 15 receives a vehicle speed signal V1 from a vehicle speed sensor 20 as a vehicle speed detecting means for detecting the vehicle speed of the host vehicle, and outputs an amber color light 16, a red light 17 and a A drive signal is output to each of the drive circuits 23, 24, 25 of the buzzer 18. The controller 15
Is, as shown in FIG. 3, a lateral relative displacement state calculating means 2
6. It also has functions as approach determination means 27, lane change determination means 28, and alarm generation means 29.

The lateral relative displacement state calculating means 26 calculates a representative point p having coordinates of the X and Y minimum values from the position data p1, p2... Pn of the object obtained by the scanning laser radar 12. Then, as shown in an imaginary diagram 7, the displacement amount of the representative point p for each time is added. Approach determination means 27
Has a relative speed calculation function and a relative distance calculation function. In the relative speed calculation function, the scanning laser radar 1
2, the relative speed Δvx ｛= (Xo ₋₁ −Xo) from the representative point po (Xo, Yo) output from the second, the previous representative point po ₋₁ (X _O−1 , Y _O−1 ) and the control cycle Δt. ) / Δt｝, Δvy
｛= (Y _O−1 −Y _O ) / Δt} is calculated. Here, the relative speed Δvy in the vehicle front-rear direction will be simply referred to as the relative speed Δv hereinafter, and the relative speed Δ in the vehicle width direction X will be described for simplification of the description.
The description of vx is omitted. In the relative distance calculation function, the relative distance is calculated from the position (X _n , Y _n ) signal of the following vehicle from the scanning laser radar 12 and the relative speed Δv. Based on the relative speed and the relative distance, it is determined that the object has approached the vehicle from the traveling direction. Scanning laser radar 1
2 has detected the object, that is, the predetermined area E1,
It may be determined that the object is approaching the vehicle by determining that the representative point exists in E2 (claim 3). Also, when the relative distance to the object becomes equal to or less than the set value, it may be determined that the vehicle is approaching. Further, it may be determined that the vehicle approaches when the relative speed with respect to the object becomes equal to or higher than the set value. The lane change determining means 28 determines from the output of the lateral relative displacement state calculating means 26 and the output of the approach determining means 27 that the vehicle and the object have approached in the vehicle width direction. In the present embodiment, the lateral position (vehicle width direction) movement amount of the representative point p within a predetermined scan cycle is ΔxΔt ₁ + ΔxΔt ₂ +... + ΔxΔt _n ≧
If the value is a fixed value, it is determined that the own vehicle is changing lanes. (Claim 2). Here, the constant value is a value larger than the fluctuation amount in the lane of the own vehicle. When the relative position in the left-right direction from the lateral relative displacement state calculating means 26 becomes equal to or smaller than a predetermined value, it may be determined that the vehicle is approaching. The warning generating means 29 generates a warning based on the determination by the lane change determining means 28.

Next, the operation of the vehicle rear-side obstacle warning device in this embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. In response to turning on of an engine key (not shown), the controller 15 starts a main routine (not shown) of the rear side alarm device of the vehicle, checks each function and determines a failure, and reaches an alarm control routine from the middle to execute it. . When the alarm control routine is reached, first, the predetermined area E1,
E2 is set (step 1), and then it is determined whether or not a representative point exists in the predetermined areas E1 and E2, that is, whether or not a following vehicle has entered (step 2). If the presence of the following vehicle is recognized, it is determined whether the relative speed is higher than a certain value (step 3). If the relative speed is higher than a certain value, the amber lamp 16 is turned on (step 3). 4) Give the driver temporary attention. When the following vehicle exits the predetermined areas E1 and E2 or when the relative speed is smaller than a certain value, it is considered that the danger to the own vehicle is low, and the operation of the amber color light 16 or the red light 17 and the buzzer 18 is performed. Turn off what you are doing (step 7). When the amber lamp 16 is turned on, the displacement amount ΔxΔt ₁ + Δ of the representative point p in the vehicle width direction is obtained.
It is determined whether or not xΔt ₂ +... + ΔxΔt _n is larger than a predetermined value (step 5). If it is larger, it is determined that the lane has been changed, and the red light 17 and the buzzer 18 are driven by the alarm generating means 29 (step 5). 6). If smaller, the red light 17 and the buzzer 18 are turned off (step 7).

In the present embodiment, since one scanning laser radar 12 is configured to cover both sides on the rear side of the vehicle, the detection accuracy can be improved as compared with a configuration in which the radar is covered by individual radars. The configuration can be simplified and the configuration can be simplified.

[0015]

According to the present invention, it is possible to reliably issue an alarm when there is an approaching object such as a following vehicle from the rear side when changing lanes or turning left or right when the turn lever is not operated. The accident avoidance ability can be improved even if there is carelessness. In addition, since the system can be configured using the lateral (vehicle width direction) displacement detection function of existing object detection means such as a scanning laser radar used for measuring the displacement amount in the traveling direction, cost is reduced. It is possible to determine a lane change or the like when the turn lever is not operated without increasing the number of components and increasing the number of components.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a rear-side obstacle warning device for a vehicle, showing one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view showing an arrangement state of main components of the rear side obstacle warning device of the vehicle in the vehicle.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a controller.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing an installation state of an amber color light and a red light in a door mirror.

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram illustrating an example of a display unit.

FIG. 6 is a schematic plan view showing a predetermined area.

FIG. 7 is a graph showing a lateral position movement amount of a representative point.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of alarm control.

FIG. 9 is a schematic plan view showing a driver's view when traveling on the left side.

[Explanation of symbols]

 12 Scanning laser radar as object detection means 26 Lateral relative displacement state calculation means 27 Approach determination means 28 Lane change determination means 29 Alarm generation means

Claims (6)

[Claims] An object detection device for detecting an object, wherein the object detection means detects the approach of an object located on the rear side of the vehicle and issues a warning to a driver. A lateral relative displacement state calculating means for calculating left-right relative information between the own vehicle and the object from an output of the means; an approach determining means for determining from the output of the object detecting means that the object has approached the vehicle; A lane change determination unit that determines that the vehicle and the object have approached from an output of the lateral relative displacement state calculation unit and an output of the approach determination unit; and an alarm based on an output from the lane change determination unit. A rear-side obstacle alarm device for a vehicle, comprising: an alarm generating unit that generates an alarm. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the lane change determining means determines that the vehicle is approaching when a lateral movement amount within a predetermined time from the lateral relative displacement state calculating means exceeds a predetermined value. Item 2. The rear-side obstacle warning device according to Item 1. 3. The rear side obstacle of a vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the approach determination means determines that the object has approached the vehicle by detecting the object by the object detection means. Object alarm device. 4. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein said lane change determining means determines the approach when the relative position in the left-right direction from the lateral relative displacement state calculating means is less than a predetermined value. Rear-side obstacle warning device. 5. The rear-side obstacle warning device according to claim 1, wherein the approach determining means determines the approach when the relative distance to the object becomes equal to or less than a set value. . 6. The rear-side obstacle warning device according to claim 1, wherein said approach determining means determines the approach when the relative speed with respect to the object is equal to or greater than a set value.