Patent ID: 11945415
Assignee: DENSO CORPORATION
Field: Transport (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC B  G | IPC B  G

Claim 8:
9. A vehicle-mounted sensor cleaning device that cleans a sensing surface of a vehicle-mounted sensor, comprising:
a gas nozzle that sprays a gas toward the sensing surface;
a gas supply device that supplies the gas to the gas nozzle; and
a control section that controls operation of the gas supply device,
wherein:
the control section is configured to:
receive, from the vehicle-mounted sensor, a value of an object detection accuracy of the vehicle-mounted sensor;
determine whether the value of the object detection accuracy is higher than a first threshold value, the first threshold value being predetermined and used for determination of whether the object detection accuracy is in an abnormal state, wherein a value of the object detection accuracy less than the first threshold value indicates that the object detection accuracy is in the abnormal state;
determine whether the value of the object detection accuracy is lower than a second threshold value, the second threshold value being a first predetermined threshold for operating the gas supply device, the second threshold value being higher than the first threshold value;
determine whether the value of the object detection accuracy is lower than a third threshold value, the third threshold value being a second predetermined threshold for operating the gas supply device, the third threshold value being higher than the first threshold value and the second threshold value;
setting a count value of a cleaning completion flag to 0 when the value of the object detection accuracy is not less than the third threshold value, the count value of the cleaning completion flag representing the number of times that gas cleaning of the sensing surface of the vehicle-mounted sensor that has been performed, and incrementing the count value of the cleaning completion flag by 1 in response to performing gas cleaning of the sensing surface of the vehicle-mounted sensor;
control the gas supply device to operate the gas supply device upon determining that the value of the object detection accuracy is lower than the second threshold value and higher than the first threshold value when the count value of the cleaning completion flag is 0; and

control the gas supply device to operate the gas supply device upon determining that the value of the object detection accuracy is lower than the third threshold value when the count value of the cleaning completion flag is greater than 0,
wherein
for a state in which the value of the object detection accuracy is lower than the second threshold value and higher than the first threshold value, only the gas from the gas supply device is sprayed toward the sensing surface.