Patent ID: 9573624
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: B62D,G01S

Claim:
1. A parking assist apparatus for performing, while moving a self-vehicle including: a distance sensor for detecting distance data to an object corresponding to a target to be detected by radiating a detection wave to the object to obtain a detection wave reflected at a reflection-point position on the object, which corresponds to a shortest distance to the object; and a vehicle information sensor for detecting, as self-vehicle data, a state relating to a velocity and a traveling direction of the self-vehicle, processing of estimating a parking space in which parking of the self-vehicle is possible when an operation mode is a search mode and performing guiding assistance processing for enabling the self-vehicle to be parked in the parking space when the operation mode is a guide mode based on results of time-series detections performed by the distance sensor and the vehicle information sensor, the parking assist apparatus comprising: a reflection-point positioning unit configured to estimate the reflection-point positions on the object in time series from the results of the time-series detections performed by the distance sensor and the vehicle information sensor; a corner detecting unit configured to estimate a corner position of the object as corner-position information by using the reflection-point positions estimated in time series by the reflection-point positioning unit; a parking-space estimating unit configured to estimate the parking space in which the parking of the self-vehicle is possible as parking-space information by using the corner-position information estimated by the corner detecting unit; and a vehicle control unit configured to provide parking assistance for enabling the self-vehicle to be parked in the parking space in accordance with the parking-space information estimated by the parking-space estimating unit, wherein: the parking-space estimating unit is further configured to: