APPARATUS FOR RECOGNIZING DRIVING ENVIRONMENT OF VEHICLE

An apparatus for recognizing driving environments of a vehicle including a plurality of sensors for detecting various parameters relating to driving conditions of the vehicle such as throttle valve open angle, vehicle running speed, brake pedal depression amount and gear shift range of an automatic transmission, first and second neuron interfaces for converting parameter values detected by the sensors into a plurality of input patterns having predetermined configuration, first and second neural networks having input layers to which corresponding input patterns are applied, hidden layers and output layers for producing recognition results, and a multiplexer for selecting one of the recognition results produced on the output layers of the first and second neural networks. The first neural network has a superior separating or recognizing and learning faculty, while the second neural network has a superior associating faculty. A accelerating pedal depression amount is detected by a sensor and a variation of the thus detected amount is compared with a reference value. When the variation is larger than the reference value, the recognition result produced by the first neural network is selected and when the variation is smaller than the reference value, the recognition result from the second neural network is selected.