Patent ID: 7522472

Claim:
An obstacle detection system, comprising: a plurality of ultrasonic sonars which are mounted to a vehicle and arrayed thereat, each of the ultrasonic sonars having a microphone for sending ultrasound as transmitting wave and receiving reflection wave reflected by an obstacle from the sending wave as receiving wave; a control unit for determining one of the ultrasonic sonars to be provided with a sending/receiving mode for sending the transmitting wave and receiving the receiving wave and another one of the ultrasonic sonars adjacent to the one thereof to be provided with a receiving mode for only receiving the receiving wave; an alarm unit for providing an alarm in according with a distance between the vehicle and the obstacle; an amplifier for amplifying a signal received by the microphone to output an amplified signal; a comparison unit for comparing the amplified signal with a threshold value used for determining whether or not the obstacle exists; a calculation unit for calculating the distance between the vehicle and the obstacle; and a gain adjustment unit for adjusting a gain at which the signal received by the microphone is amplified by the amplifier, wherein: when it is determined by the comparison unit that the amplified signal is larger than the threshold value, the receiving wave which is received is determined to be the reflection wave from the transmitting wave which is reflected, and the calculation unit calculates the distance between the vehicle and the obstacle based on a time which elapsed from sending of the transmitting wave to receiving of the receiving wave; and the another one of the ultrasonic sonars which is set to have the receiving mode by the control unit is provided with the gain, which is adjusted by the gain adjustment unit to be higher than the gain of the one of the ultrasonic sonars which is set to have the sending/receiving mode.