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EP-3276586-B1 - AUTOMATIC DRIVING ASSISTANCE DEVICE, CONTROL METHOD, PROGRAM, AND STORAGE MEDIUM

EP3276586B1EP 3276586 B1EP3276586 B1EP 3276586B1EP-3276586-B1

Inventors

  • KODA, TAKESHI
  • MITO, KENJI
  • NAKAO, KAZUHIRO
  • HATANO, MAKOTO

Dates

Publication Date
20260506
Application Date
20160322

Claims (8)

  1. An autonomous driving assistance device (1) comprised in a vehicle, comprising: a first acquisition unit (11, 12) configured to acquire or store sensor information (23) on at least one of a type and a capability of a sensor unit (13) comprised in the autonomous driving assistance device (1), the sensor unit acquiring peripheral information on surroundings of the vehicle; a second acquisition unit (54) configured to acquire road element information (Ie) which indicates a condition on a road on which the vehicle is travelling, necessary to determine a feasible automation level of each of a plurality of autonomous driving functions per road section; and a determination unit (55) configured to determine i) an autonomous driving function of the plurality of autonomous driving functions, regarding autonomous driving of the vehicle that the vehicle can perform on the road and ii) a feasible automation level of the autonomous driving function during the autonomous driving based on the sensor information, the road element information, and table information (Tj) indicating a combination of conditions needed to perform the autonomous driving with respect to a set of the autonomous driving function and the feasible automation level, wherein the conditions are indicated by the sensor information and the road element information.
  2. The autonomous driving assistance device according to claim 1, wherein the road element information includes, with respect to each road element, information on presence/absence of the road element and attribute information on the road element.
  3. The autonomous driving assistance device according to claim 1, further comprising an autonomous driving control unit (57) configured to perform autonomous driving of the vehicle based on peripheral information acquired by the sensor unit (13), wherein the road element information includes landmark information on a landmark to be detected for autonomous driving by the sensor unit.
  4. The autonomous driving assistance device according to claim 1, further comprising an autonomous driving control unit (57) configured to perform autonomous driving of the vehicle based on peripheral information acquired by the sensor unit (13), wherein the second acquisition unit is configured to acquire the road element information on a section corresponding to a present position of the vehicle, and wherein the determination unit is configured to determine the feasible automation level with respect to each autonomous driving function regarding autonomous driving in the section corresponding to the present position, and wherein the autonomous driving control unit is configured to determine, on a basis of a result determined by the determination unit, the autonomous driving function and its feasible automation level to be performed regarding the autonomous driving.
  5. The autonomous driving assistance device according to claim 1, further comprising a route search unit (51) configured to search for candidates of a route to a specified destination, and a recommended route determination unit (56) configured to select a recommended route from the candidates, wherein the second acquisition unit is configured to acquire the road element information corresponding to each section included in the candidates, wherein the determination unit is configured to determine the feasible automation level with respect to each section included in the candidates, and wherein the recommended route determination unit is configured to select the recommended route based on a result determined by the determination unit.
  6. A control method executed by an autonomous driving assistance device (1, 2), comprising a determination process to determine i) an autonomous driving function of a plurality of autonomous driving functions regarding autonomous driving of a vehicle that the vehicle can perform on a road on which the vehicle is travelling and ii) a feasible automation level of the autonomous driving function during the autonomous driving based on sensor information (23), road element information (Ie), and table information (Tj) indicating a combination of conditions needed to perform the autonomous driving with respect to each set of the autonomous driving function and the feasible automation level, wherein the conditions are indicated by the sensor information (23) and the road element information (Ie), the sensor information (23) indicating information on at least one of a type and a capability of a sensor unit (13) which acquires peripheral information on surroundings of the vehicle, the road element information (Ie) indicating a condition on the road, necessary to determine the feasible automation level of each of the plurality of autonomous driving functions per road section.
  7. A program comprising instructions which, when executed by a computer (15), cause the computer to carry out the method of claim 6.
  8. A storage medium (12) storing the program according to claim 7.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a technology for autonomous driving. BACKGROUND TECHNIQUE Conventionally, there is known so-called autonomous driving which automatically controls the driving of a vehicle. At the time of performing autonomous driving, for example, it is necessary to recognize peripheral information on the own vehicle such as a compartment line and a vehicle in front by using external sensors such as a camera and recognize the state (including posture) of the vehicle by using internal sensors such as an acceleration sensor and a gyroscope sensor. Patent Reference-1 discloses a technique for recognizing the traveling lane and a static landmark based on images from a camera mounted on a vehicle. Patent Reference-1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open under No. 2014-093018. WO 2009/153661 A1 describes a driving assistance apparatus that includes surrounding environment information obtaining means for obtaining traveling environment information that is information on a traveling environment around a vehicle; driving assistance means for performing a driving assistance operation that assists a driver of the vehicle in driving the vehicle; and driving assistance control means for controlling the driving assistance means so that the driving assistance operation is performed according to the obtained traveling environment information, and for executing a control so that a level of the driving assistance operation is gradually changed if the level of the driving assistance operation is changed. JP 2004 125726 A describes a car navigation device that prioritizes an automatic travel route when selecting a route between two points. JP 2014 066636 A discloses evaluating a type and capability of vehicle sensors to determine a level of autonomous control for use by the vehicle. DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED BY THE INVENTION Even if a vehicle itself is equipped with sensors for autonomous driving, autonomous driving with the sensors cannot be performed in such a place that there is no "object" to be recognized by the sensors or in such a situation that the object cannot be detected by the sensors. For example, in such a road section that there is no compartment line, autonomous driving which controls a vehicle by using information on a compartment line cannot be performed. Additionally, required type and performance of sensors depend on the function and its level of autonomous driving. Thus, a feasible function and its level of autonomous driving differ per vehicle. Patent Reference-1 fails to disclose above-mentioned issues. The above is an example of the problem to be solved by the present invention. An object of the present invention is to provide an autonomous driving assistance device capable of suitably determining the feasible function and its level of autonomous driving. MEANS FOR SOLVING THE PROBLEM The problems of the related art are solved by an autonomous driving assistance device, a control method, a program and a storage medium in accordance with claims 1, 6, 7 and 8. Preferable embodiments may include the additional features in accordance with one or more of the dependent claims. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic configuration of an autonomous driving system.FIG. 2 illustrates a block diagram of a driving assistance device.FIGS. 3A to 3C indicate examples of the data structures of a road section conversion table and an autonomous driving data element table.FIGS. 4A and 4B indicate examples of the data structures of an autonomous driving determination table and an autonomous driving data element.FIG. 5 is a flowchart of the route search processing.FIG. 6 is a flowchart of the autonomous driving processing.FIG. 7 is a display example of the driving assistance device.FIG. 8 is a display example of a route selection view. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS According to a preferable embodiment of the present invention, there is provided an autonomous driving assistance device including: a first acquisition unit configured to acquire or store first information on a peripheral information acquisition unit, the peripheral information acquisition unit acquiring information on surroundings of a vehicle or a state of the vehicle; a second acquisition unit configured to acquire second information on a road in a predetermined section; and a determination unit configured to determine a level, at which the vehicle can perform autonomous driving in the predetermined section, with respect to each function of the autonomous driving based on the first information and the second information. The term "autonomous driving" according to the present invention indicates not only "full autonomous driving", which does not need any driving operation of a driver under any circumstances, but also "temporal autonomous driving" which does not need a driving operation of a driver under a certain circumstances or conditions. The term "autonomous dr