Patent ID: 8346453

Claim:
A braking force control device for a vehicle, the braking force control device being configured to interact with a hydraulic brake system, and the braking force control device comprising: a manual brake device configured to brake road wheels of the vehicle in response to a driver's operation; an automatic brake device configured to obtain a fluid pressure from a pump and to control braking forces applied to the road wheels based on a running environment and a running state of the vehicle; and a controller configured to be connected to the manual brake device and the automatic brake device for deceleration control, the controller comprising: an automatic-brake selective-actuation section configured to compare a manual braking force created by the manual brake device with a required braking force for the automatic brake device and to selectively actuate the automatic brake device when the required braking force exceeds the manual braking force; a braking-force-difference time-rate-of-change calculation section configured to calculate a braking-force-difference time-rate-of-change corresponding to a rate of change per unit time in a difference, which difference is obtained by subtracting the required braking force for the automatic brake device from the manual braking force created by the manual brake device; and a required braking force control section configured to correct the required braking force for the automatic brake device to reduce the required braking force when selectively actuating the automatic brake device and to correct a reducing amount of the required braking force to decrease the reducing amount of the required braking force as the calculated braking-force-difference time-rate-of-change increases.