Apparatus and methods for calibrating dynamic parameters of a vehicle navigation system are presented. One method may include determining whether reference position data of a vehicle is available, and measuring composite accelerations of the vehicle. The method may further include generating distance and turn angle data based upon a wheel speed sensors data, computing distance and turn angle errors based upon the independent position data, and associating the distance and turn angle errors with composite accelerations. A second method presented includes calibrating an inertial navigation sensor within a vehicle navigation system. The second method may include determining reference position data and Inertial Navigation System (INS) data, aligning an IMU with the vehicle, and aligning the IMU with an Earth fixed coordinate system. The second method may further include computing the vehicle alignment with respect to a horizontal plane, and determining calibration parameters for distance sensors associated with the vehicle.

Apparatus and methods for calibrating dynamic parameters of a vehicle navigation system

A vehicle position recognition system calculates an estimated position of a vehicle based on satellite positioning and dead reckoning navigation, and calculates a basic error range in which there is a possibility that the vehicle exists. The system calculates an estimated error amount regarding a directional error factor. The directional error factor is an error factor that tends to cause an error in a specific direction with respect to a vehicle traveling direction. The estimated error amount is an estimated amount of the error that is caused by the directional error factor. The system adjusts the basic error range based on (1) a direction in which the error tends to be caused by the directional error factor and (2) the estimated error amount.

Vehicle position recognition system

A display device for a vehicle includes: a self-luminous indicator which has a display screen with a plurality of pixels; a display control unit that displays image information indicating at least a given display pattern on a display screen of the self-luminous indicator; a display time measuring unit that measures a display time of the self-luminous indicator; and a brightness adjusting unit that adjusts the brightness of the display screen on the basis of at least the display time measured by the display time measuring unit in order to suppress non-uniform brightness deterioration of the display screen when the non-uniform brightness deterioration occurs on the display screen. The display control unit displays the image information on the display screen of the self-luminous indicator with the brightness adjusted by the brightness adjusting unit.

Display device for vehicle

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a position detecting device that measures a relative position with high accuracy and also can prevent integration of an error with the relative position, and to provide a vehicle control apparatus using this position detecting device. SOLUTION: The position detecting device 10 of the moving body includes a receiving antenna 11 which receives GPS signals from a plurality of GPS satellites, a phase difference integrating part 15 which detects the phase of a carrier wave of each GPS signal at each prescribed time from the detection start time and calculates a phase change amount from a detection start time by integrating a phase difference at the prescribed time, and a relative position calculating part 16 which calculates the relative position in relation to a reference position at the detection start time, based on the phase change amount calculated by the phase difference calculating part. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Position detecting device for moving body, and vehicle control apparatus using position detecting device

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a velocity measuring device capable of obtaining the velocity of a reception point by utilizing an instability concept based on a newly defined indefinite value even if using data having the limitation of a range by the limitation of a data size, and to provide a displacement measuring device capable of obtaining displacement in a reception point. SOLUTION: A data processing section 3 calculates the velocity component of a carrier phase based on data for positioning including data of the carrier phase. Then, the data processing section 3 calculates the indefinite value of the velocity component of the carrier phase according to a data size or a time interval relating to the data of the carrier phase. Then, the data processing section 3 adds the indefinite value to the velocity component of the carrier phase to calculate the velocity component of the carrier phase while canceling instability, and calculates the velocity of a reception point based on the calculated velocity component and a direction cosine. After that, the data processing section 3 calculates the displacement of the reception point by integrating the reception point velocity. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Velocity measuring device and displacement measuring device

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a positioning device and method capable of correcting a position update error of a measured value of a wheel speed sensor unit resulting from a slip, and updating the position of a moving body with high precision SOLUTION: When the position of the moving body can be updated by a positioning result from a GPS receiver 2, the relation between a slip ratio Sr and an acceleration Aw determined from information of the sensor is predetermined from information acquired from the wheel speed sensor 1 and the receiver 2 When the position of the moving body can not be updated by the positioning result from the receiver 2, a slip ratio Sr corresponding to a found acceleration Aw' is calculated from the above relation By using this slip ratio Sr and correcting the measured value of the wheel speed sensor unit, and performing a position update by using this corrected value, the precision of updating of the position of the moving body can be raised COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Hiroshi Hamada

Papers

Positioning device and positioning method