JP2001347977A - Motorcycle headlamp device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a motorcycle headlamp device capable of securing a broad visual field even during cornering in traveling at night. SOLUTION: This motorcycle headlamp device 11 has a lamp body 12 provided with a light emitting body 22 and a lens 23 opposite to the front face of the light emitting body 22 which are rotatably provided around their center axis C; a drive machine 18 rotating the lens 23 and the bulb 22; a bank angle detection means 19 detecting a bank angle δ of a vehicle body; and a rotation control means 20. The rotation control means 20 controls the drive machine 18 on the basis of the detected bank angle δ and rotates the lens 23 and the bulb 22 opposite to a banked direction by an angle θ according to the bank angle δ.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a headlamp device for a motorcycle capable of obtaining a wide front view even when cornering in night driving.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In general, when a motorcycle runs at a certain speed during traveling, the traveling direction is changed by banking and cornering the vehicle body. However, the headlamps of conventional motorcycles are fixed to the body, and when the body is banked, the headlamp's optical axis also tilts accordingly, so when cornering in night driving, the rider's eyes turn forward. The light distribution of the headlight to the inside of the direction is reduced, and the visual field ahead in the traveling direction is narrowed.

[0003] That is, when the motorcycle goes straight ahead, the light distribution A of the headlamp spreads in the left-right direction parallel to the horizontal line H as shown in FIG. As shown in FIG. 9, when the motorcycle changes the traveling direction to the left indicated by the arrow P along the curved lane 50, the vehicle is banked to the left and cornering, so the optical axis of the headlamp is inclined to the left, Along with this, the light distribution A of the headlamp inclines to the lower left as compared to the case where the light distribution A goes straight. As a result, the light distribution A of the headlamp to the inside of the traveling direction in which the rider's line of sight is directed (portion B surrounded by a dashed circle in the drawing), that is, the area to which the rider travels, is reduced, and in effect, the light distribution A in the forward direction Field of view narrows.

Further, at the time of the above-mentioned cornering, it is detected whether the vehicle body is banked in the left or right direction, and the rotation angle of the headlamp bulb (light emitter) and the lens is controlled by the detection signal and the vehicle speed. However, in this case, when the vehicle speed decreases, the rotation angle of the lens decreases, and it is difficult to secure a sufficient field of view required by the rider.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide a motorcycle headlamp device capable of securing a wide field of view even when cornering at night.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, a motorcycle headlamp apparatus according to the present invention comprises a luminous body and a lens opposed to the front surface thereof, which are rotatable around their central axes. A lamp body provided,
A driving device for rotating the lens and the luminous body, a bank angle detecting means for detecting a bank angle of the vehicle body, and controlling the driving device on the basis of the detected bank angle, the lens and the luminous body in a direction opposite to the banking direction. And a rotation control means for rotating the angle by an angle corresponding to the size of the bank angle.

According to the motorcycle headlamp apparatus, the rotation control means controls the driving device based on the bank angle of the vehicle body detected by the bank angle detection means, and the lens and the luminous body of the lamp main body are moved. Around the central axis,
Since it rotates by the angle according to the size of the bank angle in the direction opposite to the banking direction, when cornering at night driving,
The light distribution of the headlamp to the inside in the traveling direction where the rider's line of sight is increased, and a wide field of view can be secured.

According to the embodiment of the present invention, the bank angle detecting means calculates the bank angle from the rotational angular velocity of the vehicle body in a horizontal plane and the vehicle speed. With this configuration, the bank angle can be easily and accurately obtained.

[0009] In the motorcycle headlamp device of each of the above structures, it is preferable that the rotation angle of the lens and the illuminant is not less than 1.0 times and not more than 3.0 times the bank angle. In such a configuration, the light distribution of the headlamp to the inside in the traveling direction in which the rider's line of sight is directed during cornering is increased, and a wider field of view can be secured.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a side view showing a motorcycle equipped with a headlamp device according to one embodiment of the present invention. The motorcycle 1 has a front wheel 5 attached to a front fork 4 pivotally supported by a head pipe 3 at the front end of a body frame 2, and a rearwardly mounted swing arm 7 pivotally supported by a swing arm bracket 6 at the lower center of the body frame 2. The rear wheels 8 are driven by an engine 9 mounted on the center of the vehicle body frame 2 with the wheels 8 mounted thereon, and are operated by a handle 10 fixed to the upper end of the front fork 4.

A lamp body 12 constituting a headlamp device 11 is attached to the front fork 4 via a bracket 13. As shown in the block diagram of FIG. 3, the headlamp device 11 includes, in addition to the lamp body 12, a driving device 18, an encoder (rotational position detecting means) 29, a bank angle detecting means 19, It is composed of the means 20 and the like.

FIG. 2 is a longitudinal sectional view of the lamp body 12. As shown in FIG. In the lamp body 12, a lens 23 is provided in front of a bulb 22 which is a luminous body provided in a lamp case 21.
Are arranged to face each other, and the bulb 22 and the lens 23 are rotatable around their central axis C. That is, the lamp case 21 is attached to the front annular rim 14 by a screw body (not shown).
Bowl-shaped reflector 2 arranged to surround valve 22
4 is attached by a hook and a screw body (not shown),
A lens 23 is rotatably supported on a rotation shaft 26 of a lens support 25 provided on the reflector 24. A rotation base 27 is disposed at the center of the reflector 24 so as to be coaxial with the lens 23. The valve 22 is provided with the valve bracket 31 on the center of the rotation base 27, that is, on the center axis C. Attached through.

The rotating base 27 is a fixed base 2 on its outside.
8 and rotatably supported by the fixed base 2.
8 is supported by the reflector 24 via a bracket 29. The rotation base 27 and the outer periphery of the lens 23 are connected by an arm 38. Thus, the bulb 22 and the lens 23 are rotatable relative to the lamp case 21, the rim 14, and the reflector 24. A front cover 30 is attached to a front portion of the reflector 24. A power cord 33 is connected to the valve socket 37.

The outer peripheral portion of the rotary base 27 is substantially 180
An arc-shaped driven gear 32 is provided over an angle range of degrees, while a driving device 18 for rotating the rotary base 27 is attached to the support frame 15 on the outer peripheral portion of the fixed base 28. The driving device 18 is composed of, for example, a DC motor. An encoder 29 for detecting the rotation angle of the rotation base 27, that is, the rotation angles of the lens 23 and the valve 22, is provided at a position in the outer peripheral portion of the fixed base 28 in the circumferential direction from the driving device 18. I have. The rotation of the driving machine 18 is controlled by the circular driving gear 34 and the driven gear 3.
The lens 23 is transmitted to the rotation base 27 via the lens 2, whereby the lens 23 is driven to rotate together with the valve 22.

The encoder 29 is rotated by being connected to a circular transmission gear 35 which meshes with the driven gear 32.
The rotation amount (quantity) or rotation angle of the driving machine 18 is detected,
Based on this, the rotation angles of the lens 23 and the bulb 22 are detected. The transmission gear 35 has the same number of teeth as the drive gear 34 and rotates by the same amount as the drive gear 34. The fixed base 28 is provided with a limit switch 36 for detecting over-rotation exceeding the set angle range of the rotation base 27 and stopping the driving device 18. The power cords or signal cords of the driving device 18, the encoder 29 and the limit switch 36, and the power cord 33 of the bulb 22 are connected to the lamp case 21.
Are led out from a cord lead-out hole (not shown) provided in the.

The lens 23 and the bulb 22 have a general light distribution such that the light distribution A spreads right and left along a horizontal line H when the rotation angle is 0 °, as shown in FIG. The light distribution is provided, for example, by providing a light adjusting plate for adjusting the diverging direction of light on the bulb 22 and integrally forming a large number of cylindrical lens elements and Fresnel lens elements on the front surface or the rear surface of the lens 23. Can be. Although the lens 23 uses a scattering lens,
It is not particularly limited to this.

The bank angle detecting means 19 shown in FIG. 3 is a means for detecting the bank angle δ of the vehicle body of the motorcycle 1 (FIG. 1), that is, the inclination angle in the left-right direction with respect to the vertical line of the vehicle body.
Here, the rotational angular velocity ω ₀ in the horizontal plane of the vehicle body and the vehicle speed v
, The bank angle δ is calculated. As shown in FIG. 3, the bank angle detecting means 19 in this embodiment includes a gyro 39 for measuring a rotational angular velocity ω on the vehicle body, a speedometer 40 for measuring a vehicle speed v, a rotational angular velocity ω And a bank angle calculating means 41 for calculating a bank angle δ from the vehicle speed v. The bank angle calculation means 41 is built in a control unit 42 for controlling the operation of the motorcycle. Also,
The control unit 42 includes a rotation control unit 20 that controls the driving device 18 based on the calculated bank angle δ and rotates the lens 23 in an opposite direction to the banking direction by an angle corresponding to the magnitude of the bank angle δ. Is also built-in.

The gyro 39 is, as shown in FIG.
The speedometer 40 is disposed above the headlamp body 12 and the control unit 42 is disposed below the seat 43 (FIG. 1) at the center of the vehicle body.

The calculation of the bank angle δ by the bank angle calculation means 41 is performed as follows. Assuming that the vehicle speed of the motorcycle 1 (FIG. 1) during cornering measured by the speedometer 40 in FIG. 3 is v, the rotational angular speed measured by the gyro 39 is ω, the rotational radius is R, and the gravitational acceleration is g, FIG. And FIG.
, The rotational angular velocity ω ₀ of the vehicle body in the horizontal plane is ω = ω ₀ · cos δ (1), and the centrifugal force f acting on the vehicle body is f = m, where m is the mass of the vehicle body. V · v / R (2) Since ω ₀ can be expressed as ω ₀ = v / R (3), if the equation (3) is substituted into the equation (2), the centrifugal force f becomes f = m · v · ω ₀ (4) Becomes

When the bank angle is δ, the relationship of tan δ = f / (m · g) (5) holds between the centrifugal force f applied to the vehicle body and the gravity m · g. Substituting equation (4) into equation (4), tan δ = m · v · ω ₀ / (mg · g) = v · ω ₀ / g (6) Further, the expression (6) is obtained by substituting ω ₀ in the expression (1), and tan δ = v · ω / (g · cos δ) (7) From the equation (7), the following relationship is obtained: sin δ = v · ω / g (8), from which the bank angle δ becomes δ = sin ⁻¹ (v · ω / g) (9) . The bank angle δ is calculated by inputting the rotational angular velocity ω measured by the gyro 39 and the vehicle speed v measured by the speedometer 40 into the equation (9).

Next, the operation of the motorcycle headlamp apparatus 11 will be described. For example, when a motorcycle running at night corners to the left, the bank angle built into the control unit 42 is determined based on the rotational angular velocity ω of the vehicle body measured by the gyro 39 and the vehicle speed v measured by the speedometer 40. The calculation means 41 calculates the bank angle δ of the vehicle body from the above equation (9). The rotation control means 20 built in the control unit 42
Controls the driving machine 18 based on the calculated bank angle δ. As a result, the lens 23 and the valve 22 (FIG. 2) rotate in a direction opposite to the banking direction of the vehicle body. The rotation amount of the driving device 18 detected by the encoder 29 is equal to the bank angle δ
When the rotation control means 20 reaches a value corresponding to the magnitude of the driving force, the rotation control means 20 stops the driving device 18 in response to this. As a result, the lens 23 and the valve 22 rotate in the direction opposite to the banking direction by an angle θ corresponding to the magnitude of the bank angle δ.

FIG. 6 shows the measured bank angle δ and lens 2
3 is a graph showing a relationship between the rotation angle 3 and the rotation angle θ of the valve 22. Here, the rotation angle θ of the lens 23 and the bulb 22 is set to 1.7 to 2.0 times the bank angle δ. The rotation angle θ of the lens 23 and the bulb 22 is 1.0 to
It has been found that the ratio is preferably 3.0 times, 1.7 times is appropriate for normal running, and 2.0 times is appropriate for sports running with a large bank angle. The lens 23 and the bulb 2
The upper limit value of the rotation angle θ of 2 is preferably 55 ° or less. At an angle exceeding 55 °, the left and right side portions A1 of the distribution of the light distribution A in FIG. Irradiation to the left front when banking to the left or to the right front when banking to the right becomes insufficient.

Thus, when the motorcycle changes its traveling direction to the left side indicated by the arrow P along the curved lane 50 as shown in FIG. 8, for example, the light distribution A of the headlamp device 11 is shown in FIG. From the state of extending right and left along the horizontal line H when traveling straight, the state is inclined slightly upward to the left as shown in FIG. As a result, the light distribution A of the headlamp device 11 to the inside of the traveling direction in which the line of sight of the rider is directed (the part B surrounded by a dashed circle in the figure) is much larger than in the case of the conventional example shown in FIG. , So the field of view becomes wider. In particular, in this embodiment, since the rotation angle θ of the lens 23 and the bulb 22 is set to 1.7 times the bank angle δ, the light distribution A of the headlamp device 11 to the portion B where the rider's line of sight is turned. Will be more.

In this embodiment, the range where the bank angle δ is up to 3.5 ° left and right is a dead zone, and in this angle range, the lens 23 and the valve 22 are not rotated according to the bank angle δ. For this reason, even when the bank angle δ fluctuates finely when traveling straight or traveling on a gentle curve, the irradiation angle of the headlamp device 11 does not change, the light distribution state becomes calm, and the rider does not feel uncomfortable.

In the above embodiment, the bank angle detecting means 19 detects the gyro 39 for measuring the rotational angular velocity ω of the vehicle body.
And a speedometer 40 for measuring the vehicle speed v, and a bank angle calculating means 41 for calculating a bank angle δ from the measured rotational angular speed ω and the vehicle speed v. Accuracy can be obtained, but not limited to this.
For example, the distance from a certain location on the upper part of the vehicle body to the ground may be obtained by a distance meter using ultrasonic waves or the like, and the bank angle may be measured from the distance.

In the above embodiment, the lens 23 and the bulb 22 are rotated by an angle corresponding to the bank angle δ. However, for example, when the reflector 24 (FIG. 2) has a light distribution property. Is a reflector 24 and a valve 2
2 may be rotated.

[0027]

As described above, according to the motorcycle headlamp apparatus of the present invention, the rotation control means controls the driving machine on the basis of the bank angle of the vehicle body detected by the bank angle detection means. The main body lens and luminous body are rotated around the central axis by an angle corresponding to the size of the bank angle in the direction opposite to the banking direction, so when cornering during night driving, the direction of the rider's line of sight is turned. The light distribution of the headlamp to the inside increases, and a wide field of view can be secured.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a side view of a motorcycle equipped with a headlamp device according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a vertical sectional view of a lamp body in the headlamp.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of the headlamp.

FIG. 4 is a rear view showing a bank angle calculation method by the bank angle calculation means.

FIG. 5 is a plan view showing a turning radius and a vehicle speed during cornering of the motorcycle.

FIG. 6 is a characteristic diagram showing a relationship between a rotation angle of a lens and a bank angle in the headlamp.

FIG. 7 is a front view showing a light distribution state of a headlamp when the motorcycle goes straight ahead.

FIG. 8 is a front view showing a light distribution state at the time of cornering of the headlamp.

FIG. 9 is a front view showing a light distribution state during cornering of a conventional headlamp.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 11 ... Head lamp apparatus, 12 ... Lamp body, 18 ... Driver, 19 ... Bank angle detection means, 20 ... Rotation control means,
Reference numeral 22: bulb (light emitting body), 23: lens, 39: gyro, 40: speedometer, 41: bank angle calculation means, C: central axis, δ: bank angle, ω ₀ : rotational angular velocity, v: vehicle speed, θ:
Lens rotation angle

──────────────────────────────────────────────────の Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat ゛ (Reference) B62J 39/00 B60Q 1/10 A (72) Inventor Keiji Murao 1-1-1 Kawasaki-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki (72) Inventor Akinori Kitajima 1-1, Kawasaki-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.Katsuhisa Nagata 1-1, Kawasaki-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. Inside the Akashi Factory (72) Inventor Takashi Shinoda 1-1, Kawasaki-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. Inside the Akashi Factory (72) Inventor Shin Otsu 1-1-1, Kawasaki-cho, Akashi-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. F term in Akashi factory (reference) 3K039 AA03 BA01 FB01 FB08

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A lamp body in which a luminous body and a lens facing the front surface thereof are rotatably provided around a central axis thereof; a driving device for rotating the lens and the luminous body; and detecting a bank angle of a vehicle body. A bank angle detecting means for controlling the driving device based on the detected bank angle, and a rotation control means for rotating the lens and the light emitter in an opposite direction to the banking direction by an angle corresponding to the size of the bank angle. Motorcycle equipped headlamp device. 2. The headlamp device for a motorcycle according to claim 1, wherein said bank angle detecting means calculates a bank angle from a rotational angular velocity of the vehicle body in a horizontal plane and a vehicle speed. 3. The headlamp device for a motorcycle according to claim 1, wherein a rotation angle of the lens and the luminous body is 1.0 times or more and 3.0 times or less of a bank angle.