Patent ID: 7218385

Claim:
A preceding vehicle recognition apparatus, comprising: a radar means for radiating a plurality of transmission signals over a predetermined angular range spread at least in a transversal direction of a vehicle and for outputting received signals each representing an intensity of a reflection signal reflected by a signal-reflecting body as a result of reflecting any one of the radiated transmission signals; a received-signal integration means for setting a plurality of received-signal integration groups each comprising a first predetermined number of received signals representing a predetermined number of adjacent transmission signals radiated by the radar means such that a preceding one of the received-signal integration groups is shifted to form a succeeding one of the received-signal integration groups by an interval corresponding to a second predetermined number of received signals fewer than the first predetermined number of received signals composing each of the received-signal integration groups so that some of the received signals pertain to adjacent preceding and succeeding received-signal integration groups overlapping each other and for integrating the first predetermined number of received signals composing each of the received-signal integration groups to find and output an integrated received signal for each of the received-signal integration groups; a reflector-position computation means for extracting the received signals each representing the intensity of a reflection signal reflected by reflectors mounted on a rear face of a preceding vehicle at least based on the intensities of the reflected signals and for finding positions of the reflectors based on the extracted received signals; a body rear-face area computation means for computing the area of a rear face of a body forming the preceding vehicle from the integrated received signals output by the received-signal integration means; a width computation means for computing a width of the preceding vehicle based on the positions of the reflectors and the area of the rear face of the body forming the preceding vehicle and for holding the computed width; and a preceding vehicle recognition means for continuously recognizing the preceding vehicle by identifying the preceding vehicle based on the width held by the width computation means as the width of the preceding vehicle.