Appeal No. 1996-3507
Application 08/041,209
hydraulic fluid pressure, adjusts the attitude of the vehicle
by controlling the vertical position of the piston 13 (Fig. 3)
in each suspension unit by adding hydraulic oil to or
discharging hydraulic oil from chamber 14A (col. 4, lines 26-
49). The second type of control is expressly described as
damping control. Specifically, control unit 34 acts through
selector 21 (Fig. 3) to selectively connect one or more of
damper valves 20A and 20B and associated accumulators 22A and
22B (Fig. 3) to branch 19 and thus to fluid path 16 in order
to adjust the spring constant and damping characteristic of
each suspension unit (col. 4, lines 50-55; col. 5, lines 23-28
and 41-47; col. 9, lines 33-37). The decision to adjust the
damping characteristic in this manner is based on only the
vertical speed (col. 9, lines 37-53).
Ema's second embodiment, shown in Figures 10-14,
additionally employs a throttle speed sensor 36 and a brake
sensor 37 (Fig. 11) to permit the system to control the piston
positions for suppressing squatting and reactive jerk in the
manner shown in Figure 12 (col. 12, lines 17-20) and also for
suppressing nose-dive and reactive jerk in the manner shown
in Figure 13 (col. 14, lines 32-35). Of these two figures,
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