1. An electronic appliance equipped with a network connection function, the electronic appliance comprising:
reception means for receiving data transmitted through a communication path of a network;
temporary storage means for temporarily storing the data received by said reception means;
communication means for communicating with an external appliance existing on the network;
attribute information acquisition means for acquiring attribute information of the external appliance;
judging means for judging whether to communicate with the external appliance based on the attribute information of the external appliance;
address recording means for recording an address of the external appliance on the network in accordance with an outcome of judgment of the judging means; and
data selection control means for rejecting data from an external appliance with which communication is not required but storing data from an external appliance with which communication is required in the temporary storage means by referring to the address recording means.
2. The electronic appliance according to claim 1, wherein the address recording means records the address on the network of each external appliance with which communication is not required.
3. The electronic appliance according to claim 1, wherein the address recording means records the address on the network of each external appliance with which communication is required.
4. The electronic appliance according to claim 1, wherein the address on the network is a unique physical address assigned to the external appliance.
5. The electronic appliance according to claim 1, wherein:
the attribute information includes information on a service that the external appliance provides; and
the judging means judges that communication with the external appliance is not required if the external appliance does not provides any service to the electronic appliance.
6. The electronic appliance according to claim 1, wherein the data selection control means is mounted in a piece of hardware that operates as an interface between the electronic appliance and the communication path of the network.
7. An electronic appliance equipped with a network connection function, the electronic appliance comprising:
a reception section that receives data transmitted through a communication path of a network;
a temporary storage section that temporarily stores the data received by said reception section;
a communication section that communicates with an external appliance existing on the network;
an attribute information acquisition section that acquires attribute information of the external appliance;
a judging section that judges whether to communicate with the external appliance based on the attribute information of the external appliance;
an address recording section that records an address of the external appliance on the network in accordance with an outcome of judgment of the judging section; and
a data selection control section that rejects data from an external appliance with which communication is not required but stores the data from an external appliance with which communication is required in the temporary storage section by referring to the appliance address recording section.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A vehicle braking assist device for a host vehicle comprising:
a risk potential computing device that computes a risk potential of the host vehicle with respect to an obstacle in the travelling direction of the host vehicle
based on a computed arrival time or distance to the obstacle;
a sensor that detects an operation state of an accelerator;
a braking force application device; and
a controller that controls the braking force assist device to:
(1) apply a breaking force when the risk potential exceeds a first threshold, but not a second threshold, unless the operation state of the accelerator exceeds a prescribed value, thus overriding the breaking assist device; and
(2) apply a breaking force irrespective of the operation state of the accelerator when the risk potential exceeds the second threshold that is greater than the first threshold.
2. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 1, further comprising:
an external disturbance determining part that determines an external disturbance that influences braking applied on the host vehicle; and
a braking force instruction value computing part that corrects the braking applied on the host vehicle by increasing at least one of the first braking force and the second braking force applied by the braking force application device when a level of suppression of braking applied on the host vehicle increases due to the external disturbance.
3. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 1, further comprising:
an accelerator reactive force application device that applies an accelerator reactive force when the risk potential is higher than a predetermined third threshold.
4. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 3 wherein the risk potential represented by the third threshold is lower than the risk potential represented by the first threshold.
5. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 3, further comprising:
an external disturbance determining part that determines an external disturbance that influences braking applied on the host vehicle; and
a braking force instruction value computing part that corrects the braking applied on the host vehicle by decreasing the third threshold when a level of suppression of braking applied on the host vehicle increases due to the external disturbance.
6. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 3, further comprising:
an external disturbance determining part that determines an external disturbance that influences braking applied on the host vehicle; and
a braking force instruction value computing part that corrects the braking applied on the host vehicle by increasing the accelerator reactive force applied by the accelerator reactive force applying device when a level of suppression of braking applied on the host vehicle increases due to the external disturbance.
7. The vehicle braking assist device of claims 1, wherein the risk potential computing device computes a proximity of the host vehicle to the obstacle as a value representing the risk potential, and the braking force application device determines whether the risk potential is higher than one or both of the first threshold and the second threshold based on the computed proximity.
8. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 7, wherein the risk potential computing part computes the proximity based on the relative distance between the host vehicle and the obstacle, using information comprising at least one of: a relative speed of the host vehicle with respect to the obstacle, and a relative accelerationdeceleration of the host vehicle with respect to the obstacle.
9. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 7, wherein the risk potential computing part computes the expected arrival time determined for the host vehicle to reach the position of the obstacle as the proximity using information comprising at least one of: a relative speed of the host vehicle with respect to the obstacle, and a relative accelerationdeceleration of the host vehicle with respect to the obstacle.
10. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 7, further comprising:
picture taking means that takes pictures in the travelling direction of the host vehicle;
wherein the risk potential computing part computes the proximity based on images of the obstacle in the pictures taken by the picture taking means.
11. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 1, further comprising:
an external disturbance determining part that determines an external disturbance that influences braking applied on the host vehicle; and
a braking force instruction value computing part that corrects the braking applied on the host vehicle by decreasing at least one of the first threshold and the second threshold when a level of suppression of braking applied on the host vehicle increases due to the external disturbance.
12. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 11, wherein the external disturbance determined by the external disturbance determining part is an external disturbance caused by at least one of a braking torque transmission rate when a braking force is applied on the vehicle, a road surface frictional coefficient, and a vehicle weight of the host vehicle.
13. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 11, wherein the external disturbance determined by the external disturbance determining part is an external disturbance caused by at least one of a road slope and an air drag.
14. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 11, wherein:
the external disturbance determining part determines an external disturbance when the first braking force is applied by the braking force application device; and
the braking force instruction value computing part corrects at least one of the second threshold and the first braking force applied by the braking force application device based on the external disturbance.
15. The vehicle braking assist device of claim 14, further comprising:
a wheel velocity sensor that detects a wheel velocity of the host vehicle; and
an accelerationdeceleration computing part that computes the accelerationdeceleration of the host vehicle based on the wheel velocity of the host vehicle;
wherein the external disturbance determining part determines the external disturbance based on the accelerationdeceleration of the host vehicle and the first braking force applied by the braking force application device.
16. A method of assisting vehicle braking of a host vehicle comprising:
detecting a risk potential of the host vehicle with respect to an obstacle in a travelling direction of the host vehicle
based on a computed arrival time or distance to the obstacle;
detecting an operating state of an accelerator of the host vehicle; and
(1) applying a breaking force when the risk potential exceeds a first threshold, but not a second threshold, unless the operation state of the accelerator exceeds a prescribed value, thus overriding a breaking assist device; and
(2) applying a breaking force irrespective of the operation state of the accelerator when the risk potential exceeds the second threshold that is greater than the first threshold.
17. A vehicle braking assist device for a host vehicle comprising:
risk potential computing means that computes a risk potential of the host vehicle with respect to an obstacle in the travelling direction of the host vehicle
based on a computed arrival time or distance to the obstacle;
accelerator detecting means that detects an operation state of an accelerator;
braking force application means; and
a controller that controls the braking force assist device to:
(1) apply a breaking force when the risk potential exceeds a first threshold, but not a second threshold, unless the operation state of the accelerator exceeds a prescribed value, thus overriding the breaking assist device; and
(2) apply a breaking force irrespective of the operation state of the accelerator when the risk potential exceeds the second threshold that is greater than the first threshold.