Patent ID: 9269264
Filing Date: 2016-02-23
CPC Classification: G08G

Claim Text:
1. A vehicle driving assistance device comprising: a vehicle behavior information acquiring unit that acquires vehicle behavior information about behavior of a vehicle; an estimation available or unavailable determining unit that determines whether another vehicle that has performed inter-vehicle communication with the vehicle corresponds to an other vehicle travelling in front of the vehicle, and determines whether it is possible to estimate traffic conditions between the other vehicle and the vehicle; an other-vehicle behavior information acquiring unit that acquires other-vehicle behavior information about behavior of the another vehicle that can perform inter-vehicle communication which travels in front of the vehicle in the same lane, through inter-vehicle communication between the vehicle and the another vehicle that can perform inter-vehicle communication, when the estimation available or unavailable determining unit has determined that estimating the traffic conditions between the other vehicle and the vehicle is possible; a traffic condition estimating unit that estimates traffic conditions regarding a number of communication-incapable vehicles between the vehicle and the another vehicle in the same lane, on the basis of the vehicle behavior information acquired by the vehicle behavior information acquiring unit and the other-vehicle behavior information acquired by the other-vehicle behavior information acquiring unit; and a driving assistance unit that performs driving assistance on the basis of an estimation result of the traffic condition estimating unit, wherein the estimation available or unavailable determining unit determines it is impossible to estimate the traffic conditions when the other vehicle travels directly in front of the vehicle, the vehicle behavior information includes information about a speed variation of the vehicle, the other-vehicle behavior information includes information about a speed variation of the another vehicle, and the traffic condition estimating unit estimates traffic conditions between the vehicle and the another vehicle on the basis of the information on the speed variation of the another vehicle and the information about the speed variation of the vehicle, calculates a delay time between a deceleration start time of another vehicle and a deceleration start time of the vehicle on the basis of the information about the speed variation of another vehicle and the information about the speed variation of the vehicle, and estimates traffic conditions on the basis of the delay time.