Parking assist apparatus

1. A parking assist apparatus for guiding a vehicle toward a target parking position, comprising:

target parking position setting means for setting the target parking position in accordance with an operation applied to a target parking position designation display that is displayed on a screen showing a periphery of said vehicle; and

cancellation condition determining means for determining whether a cancellation condition of canceling a guidance of said vehicle toward the target parking position is established,

wherein:

said target parking position setting means is capable of setting an absolute position represented by a target parking position information held by a memory holding means as a new target parking position;

said memory holding means is adapted to continuously hold said target parking position information regarding the absolute position of the target parking position set by said target parking position setting means after the cancellation condition is established;

characterized by the parking assist apparatus further comprising:

path computation determining means adapted to determine, in a state where the cancellation condition is established and the guidance of said vehicle is stopped and said vehicle is stopped at a stop position, whether or not a path from the stop position to the absolute position is defined by computation; and

screen controlling means adapted to shift the screen to an initial screen when the path is not defined by computation, and to a setting screen for setting the target parking position when the path is defined by computation.

2. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said memory holding means is adapted to hold the target parking position information of said absolute position after the cancellation condition is established and until resetting of the target parking position is performed by said target parking position setting means.

3. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said memory holding means is adapted such that the holding of the target parking position information by said memory holding means is canceled when a movement of said vehicle exceeding a certain distance is detected after the cancellation condition is established.

4. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said target parking position setting means is capable of setting the absolute position represented by the target parking position information held by said memory holding means as a new target parking position.

5. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 4 , further comprising screen controlling means for controlling contents displayed on the screen when the guidance of said vehicle is stopped due to an establishment of the cancellation condition so that the contents displayed on the screen is changed in accordance with a result of computation of a path from a current position of said vehicle to the new target parking position.

6. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the screen controlling means shifts the screen to an initial screen when the path is not defined by computation.

7. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the screen controlling means shifts the screen to a setting screen for setting the target parking position when the path is defined by computation.

8. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 6 , wherein the screen controlling means shifts the screen to a setting screen for setting the target parking position when the path is defined by computation.

9. The parking assist apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the holding of the target parking position information by said memory holding means is cancelled when a movement of said vehicle is detected after the cancellation condition is established.