A traveling assistance apparatus recognizes a travel road on which a vehicle is traveling, acquires a traveling state of the vehicle, and determines whether or not the vehicle will deviate from the travel road based on the recognition result of the travel road and the traveling state of the vehicle. The apparatus determines whether to perform, as a prevention method for preventing from the travel road, a method in which either of steering control and brake control of the vehicle is performed, or a method in which a period over which either of the steering control and the brake control is performed and a period over which both of the steering control and the brake control are performed are set. The apparatus sets a steering amount for the steering control and a brake amount for the brake control when the deviation prevention control is performed based on the prevention method.

Provided are methods for motion planner constraint generation based on road surface hazards, which can include receiving information about an object, identifying the object as a particular road hazard, generating one or more motion constraints based on the road hazard, and controlling a vehicle based on the motion constraints. Systems and computer program products are also provided.

Systems and methods for an autonomous vehicle are provided. In one aspect, an autonomous vehicle includes a perception sensor and a processor configured to: receive detected roadway conditions data including roadway grade data from the perception sensor, retrieve mapped data having grade data, and determine that the roadway has a grade based on the detected roadway grade data and the retrieved roadway grade data. The processor can be further configured to, in response to determining that the roadway has a grade, determine that the grade of the roadway is greater than or equal to a predetermined high grade value and less than a predetermined grade limit, and in response to determining that the grade of the roadway is greater than or equal to the predetermined high grade value and less than the predetermined grade limit, operate the autonomous vehicle to change lane to a right-most lane.

A vehicle control apparatus includes a microprocessor configured to perform: recognizing a surrounding situation of a subject vehicle; controlling a traveling actuator so that the subject vehicle travels along a target path generated based on a recognition result; and predicting, when an object is recognized in a current lane or in an adjacent lane, whether a passing run is occur based on a relative speed with the object. The generating includes, when the passing run is predicted to occur, generating the target path so that the subject vehicle executes an offset driving in which the subject vehicle is offset in a vehicle width direction relative to the object, and so that an acceleration of the subject vehicle in the vehicle width direction while shifting to or returning from the offset driving is equal to or less than a predetermined value.

The present invention relates to a vehicle control device for a vehicle, comprising a number of first control devices which are independent of each other and are arranged in a first logical level and designed to calculate predetermined first vehicle control functions and to output first calculation results, a number of further control devices which are independent of each other, are arranged in a number which is superordinate from the first logical level and hierarchically arranged among each other and are designed to calculate further predetermined vehicle control functions and to output further calculation results. According to the invention, the further control devices are designed to use calculation results only of those control devices as input variables for the corresponding vehicle control functions which are arranged in logical levels hierarchically below the logical level of the respective control device.

A vehicle control apparatus is provided. The vehicle control apparatus comprises a load unit for loading a load; a weight sensor for estimating a position of a center of mass of the load; a drive unit; and a control unit for controlling autonomous travelling of a vehicle by controlling the drive unit, wherein the control unit estimates a position of the center of mass of the load based on a weight measured by the weight sensor, and controls an acceleration rate of the vehicle in accordance with the position of the center of mass.

A control apparatus of a vehicle includes: a steering apparatus (6) including a steering wheel (11) operated in order to turn a vehicle (1) and a steering angle sensor (8) that detects a steering angle of the steering wheel (11), the steering apparatus (6) steering a front wheel (steered wheel) (2) of the vehicle (1) in accordance with operation of the steering wheel (11); and a controller (14) that sets a steering angle acceleration based on the steering angle detected by the steering angle sensor (8) and controls vehicle motion when the steering wheel (11) is operated to be turned. In particular, the controller (14) suppresses a rise of lateral acceleration of the vehicle (1) based on the steering angle acceleration in order to control the vehicle motion.

Systems and methods are directed to motion planning for an autonomous vehicle. In one example, a computer-implemented method for road surface dependent motion planning includes obtaining, by a computing system comprising one or more computing devices, surface friction data. The method further includes determining, by the computing system, one or more constraints for motion planning based at least in part on the surface friction data. The method further includes generating, by the computing system, a motion plan for an autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the one or more constraints.

A driving assist method and a driving assist device is provided for controlling a transmission ratio of a continuously variable transmission, which steplessly shifts gears and outputs an engine rotation speed. The driving assist method and a driving assist device continuously performs downshifting until an upshift occurs, when the transmission ratio of the continuously variable transmission is controlled so that the engine rotational speed increases in conjunction with an increase in a vehicle speed and the upshift will be performed after the vehicle has accelerated.

A driving consciousness estimation device includes a driving readiness estimation unit configured to estimate a driving readiness relating to a driving consciousness of the driver from a driver's reaction to the travelling environment, a driving task demand estimation unit configured to estimate a driving task demand which is an index required for the driver with respect to the driving readiness from the travelling environment, and an attention awakening unit configured to execute awakening of attention for the driver relating to the driving of the vehicle based on the result of comparison between the driving readiness and the driving task demand.