VISIBILITY SITUATION JUDGMENT APPARATUS, AUTOMOBILE, AND VISIBILITY SITUATION JUDGMENT METHOD

摘要

PPROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To precisely judge the visibility situation of a driver when traveling in a vehicle without using an expensive and large apparatus. PSOLUTION: A visibility situation judgment apparatus is equipped with a pedal reaction force apparatus 12 to perform the driving operation support by adding the operation reaction force to the accelerator operation corresponding to the degree of approach with a preceding vehicle, judges the degree of attention of the driver to the degree of approach with the preceding vehicle on the basis of the volume of the accelerator operation by the driver when the operation reaction force to the accelerator operation is added, acquires beforehand the special character of an eyeball motion of the driver on the basis of the degree of attention and a line of sight of the driver, and judges the visibility situation of the driver to an object in the front by comparing the subsequent eyeball motion of the driver with the special character of the eyeball motion acquired beforehand. The degree of attention is judged by calculating a coefficient of correlation showing the compliance of the volume of the accelerator operation to the variation of the operation reaction force and it is judged that the higher the coefficient of correlation is, the lower the degree of attention of the driver is. PCOPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT