US Patent Issued to Hitachi Astemo on March 17 for "Driving assistance apparatus and driving assistance method" (Japanese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,576,843, issued on March 17, was assigned to Hitachi Astemo Ltd. (Hitachinaka, Japan).

"Driving assistance apparatus and driving assistance method" was invented by Seiji Watanabe (Ibaraki, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A driving assistance apparatus includes: a communication function detection unit that detects whether or not a surrounding vehicle is equipped with a communication function; a surrounding vehicle information acquisition unit that acquires a relative distance between the host vehicle and a surrounding vehicle equipped with the communication function on the basis of information acquired from the surrounding vehicle e...