Patents by Inventor Yoichi Fujiwara

Yoichi Fujiwara has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20230322286
    Abstract: In a traveling apparatus, multiple first detectors and multiple second detectors are arrayed in an intersectant direction intersecting a travel direction where a vehicle body travels. The second detectors are separated in the travel direction from the first detectors. The first detectors and the second detectors detect a guide extending on a road surface. A first interval between two first detectors adj acent to each other in the intersectant direction is smaller than a second interval between two second detectors adjacent to each other in the intersectant direction.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 16, 2023
    Publication date: October 12, 2023
    Applicant: SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Yoichi FUJIWARA
  • Patent number: 10286883
    Abstract: The present invention provides a motor-driven traveling device including: a vehicle body; a motor for travel driving that is capable of braking the vehicle body as a short brake or a dynamic brake; an electromagnetic brake that brakes the vehicle body, separately from the motor; an operation switching circuit that switches between causing the motor to perform travel driving and causing the motor to perform braking; a brake release switch that receives an operation pertaining to brake releasing of the motor and the electromagnetic brake; and a brake control circuit that, while the brake release switch is operated, controls the motor and the electromagnetic brake in response to the operation on the brake release switch.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 27, 2017
    Date of Patent: May 14, 2019
    Assignee: SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Yoichi Fujiwara
  • Publication number: 20180257625
    Abstract: A brake control device of a non-excitation actuation type mounted on a traveling vehicle to release an electromagnetic brake upon energization of an electromagnet includes a current quantity control unit which controls a current quantity to be supplied to the electromagnet. The current quantity control unit performs control by an attraction voltage to be applied when the electromagnetic brake is released, a retention voltage to be applied to maintain a release state, and a re-attraction voltage to be applied to readjust a retention state.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 8, 2018
    Publication date: September 13, 2018
    Inventor: Yoichi FUJIWARA
  • Publication number: 20170327093
    Abstract: The present invention provides a motor-driven traveling device including: a vehicle body; a motor for travel driving that is capable of braking the vehicle body as a short brake or a dynamic brake; an electromagnetic brake that brakes the vehicle body, separately from the motor; an operation switching circuit that switches between causing the motor to perform travel driving and causing the motor to perform braking; a brake release switch that receives an operation pertaining to brake releasing of the motor and the electromagnetic brake; and a brake control circuit that, while the brake release switch is operated, controls the motor and the electromagnetic brake in response to the operation on the brake release switch.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 27, 2017
    Publication date: November 16, 2017
    Inventor: Yoichi FUJIWARA
  • Patent number: 6356590
    Abstract: An apparatus is provided to reduce the memory capacity required to hold the data of a search area when motion vector detection is conducted in a wider area by using a plurality of motion vector detecting circuits. A motion vector detecting device includes an object pixel memory, reference pixel memory, motion vector detecting circuits, and a vector selecting circuit. Data of different blocks are provided to each of motion vector detecting circuits from the object pixel memory. Data of common search areas are simultaneously provided to the motion vector detecting circuits from the reference pixel memory. Output from each of the motion vector detecting circuits is processed by the vector selecting circuit to provide a motion vector in a search area which is wider than the search area of each motion vector.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 2, 1998
    Date of Patent: March 12, 2002
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Tadao Matsuura, Yoichi Fujiwara
  • Patent number: 6345708
    Abstract: It is one object of this invention to eliminate a driver's impression of delay in braking effectiveness at an initial stage of a braking operation and the phenomenon of over-braking with an internal drum brake device. For this purpose rigid anchor members (61b, 61b) and deformable anchor members (64, 64) respectively providing supporting points for the brake shoes are located at diametrically different positions from a brake center. The brake shoes (20, 30) are supported by the deformable anchor members (64, 64) until a braking force reaches a predetermined value but are supported by the rigid anchor members (61b, 61b) when braking forces exceeds the predetermined value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2000
    Date of Patent: February 12, 2002
    Assignee: Nisshinbo Industries, Inc.
    Inventor: Yoichi Fujiwara
  • Patent number: 6343100
    Abstract: In a motion-vector detecting device for detecting motion-vectors of images processed through a two-dimensional filter by a subsampling method, a filter circuit must process pixel values at a block boundary by delaying the pixel value in both horizontal and vertical directions, which complicates reading pixel data from memory and increases the size of the filter circuit. The present invention provides a motion-vector detecting device for detecting motion-vectors by searching a match of a coding block of a coding image with a prediction candidate-block in a searching area of a reference image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 28, 1998
    Date of Patent: January 29, 2002
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoichi Fujiwara, Tadao Matsuura, Hiroshi Kusao
  • Patent number: 6131708
    Abstract: A shock absorber (13) is provided between the anchor (9) and the ends (2b, 3b) of the brake shoes (2, 3) facing the anchor (9) to reduce the impact noise between the brake shoe and the anchor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 7, 1998
    Date of Patent: October 17, 2000
    Assignee: Nisshinbo Industries Inc.
    Inventor: Yoichi Fujiwara
  • Patent number: 6091774
    Abstract: The invention is directed to provide a code-amount control device for use in video-coding device, which controls the generated code-amount of each block (block length) after variable-length coding in the video-coding process to surely be less than the designated target code-amount. The code amount control device is provided with a rate control circuit for setting a target code-amount of each of blocks to be encoded, a rounding circuit for converting a sequence of quantized values into a set of the number of continuous zeroes and following thereto non-zero quantized values and a code-length table containing variable code-length values to be allocated to respective sets of the number of continuous zeroes and non-zero values.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 25, 1998
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2000
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masaaki Hyodo, Yoichi Fujiwara, Tadao Matsuura
  • Patent number: 6052417
    Abstract: A motion image coding apparatus providing enhanced image quality as compared with the prior art includes a coding unit for coding first, second and third frames, a prediction efficiency calculating circuit for calculating prediction efficiency in inter-frame prediction, in coding by the coding unit using said first or second frame as a reference frame, and a reference frame interval determining circuit for determining a reference frame interval which is a time interval between the first and second frames, time interval between the second frames and time interval between the first frames.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 1998
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2000
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoichi Fujiwara, Tadao Matsuura, Hiroshi Kusao
  • Patent number: 5859668
    Abstract: A moving image coder has a forward predicting motion vector/prediction error amount detecting section for detecting an optimum motion vector from a past frame, making a predicted image and calculating a prediction error amount from the present frame. The coder also has a backward predicting motion vector/prediction error amount detecting section for detecting an optimum motion vector from a future frame, making a predicted image and calculating a prediction error amount from the present frame. The coder further has a comparator/mode selecting section for inputting the prediction error amounts from the forward predicting motion vector/prediction error amount detecting section and the backward prediction motion vector/prediction error amount detecting section, making a comparative calculation of the input prediction error amounts, and selecting one of a forward prediction mode, a backward prediction mode and a bidirectional prediction mode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1996
    Date of Patent: January 12, 1999
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Tomoko Aono, Toshiyuki Miyake, Hiroyuki Katata, Yoichi Fujiwara, Hiroshi Kusao
  • Patent number: 5856848
    Abstract: A moving image coder has an arithmetic unit for calculating an average value of a coding object block; an arithmetic unit for obtaining an alternating current component by subtracting the average value from each of pixel values of the coding object block; an arithmetic unit for obtaining a intra frame activity amount by making a calculation of the same kind as an error calculation in a motion prediction with respect to the obtained alternating current component; and a comparator for comparing the intra frame activity amount with a predicting error amount calculated when the motion prediction is made. The inter frame coding mode or the intra frame coding mode is judged by large and small relations of the predicting error amount and the intra frame activity amount. In this moving image coder, codings of a intra frame block and a inter frame differential block are adaptively switched in a small hardware scale.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 25, 1997
    Date of Patent: January 5, 1999
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoichi Fujiwara, Toshiyuki Miyake, Hiroyuki Katata, Tomoko Aono, Hiroshi Kusao
  • Patent number: 5760835
    Abstract: The prediction error value calculated by a motion estimating portion is used for selecting the frame or field orthogonal transform coding mode. The frame prediction error value EFr and the field prediction error value EFi are calculated by the motion estimating portion and entered into a comparator of an orthogonal transform mode selecting portion which in turn compares them with each other and generates an orthogonal transform mode selecting signal TC. The use of the prediction error values for selecting the orthogonal transform mode makes it possible to reduce the size of the necessary hardware and saves much time of data processing necessary for judgment of the orthogonal transform mode selection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 9, 1997
    Date of Patent: June 2, 1998
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoichi Fujiwara, Hiroshi Kusao, Toshiyuki Miyake, Hiroyuki Katata, Tomoko Aono
  • Patent number: 5721588
    Abstract: The prediction error value calculated by a motion estimating portion is used for selecting the frame or field orthogonal transform coding mode. The frame prediction error value EFr and the field prediction error value EFi are calculated by the motion estimating portion and entered into a comparator of an orthogonal transform mode selecting portion which in turn compares them with each other and generates an orthogonal transform mode selecting signal TC. The use of the prediction error values for selecting the orthogonal transform mode makes it possible to reduce the size of the necessary hardware and saves much time of data processing necessary for judgment of the orthogonal transform mode selection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 5, 1995
    Date of Patent: February 24, 1998
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoichi Fujiwara, Hiroshi Kusao, Toshiyuki Miyake, Hiroyuki Katata, Tomoko Aono