Vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus
First Claim
1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus including:
- a radar for scanningly irradiating electromagnetic waves over a predetermined angular range around a subject vehicle on which said apparatus is mounted, detecting the electromagnetic waves reflected from objects lying around said subject vehicle, and outputting a plurality of directions of scanning irradiation and detected distances from said subject vehicle to said objects in the respective directions of scanning irradiation; and
a recognition unit for outputting, based on the detection results of said radar, a relative position and a relative speed, or a rate of change of the relative position, of each of said objects lying around said subject vehicle with respect to said subject vehicle;
said recognition unit comprising;
a detection points data storage section for storing therein whether or not detection points data in the form of a data pair comprising a direction of scanning irradiation and a detected distance in that direction output by said radar exists in each of M×
N small regions into which X, Y coordinates with an X axis being set in a widthwise direction of said subject vehicle and a Y axis being set in a running direction of said subject vehicle are divided, in a two-dimensional array including a plurality of elements corresponding to the small regions, respectively; and
an object detection section for performing arithmetic operations of multiplication and summation of the respective elements of said two-dimensional array representative of the presence or absence of the detection points data stored in said detection points data storage section while sequentially scanning a mask of a two-dimensional array comprising J×
K (J<
N, K<
M) elements, and determining, based on the results of the arithmetic operations, attributes such as positions, sizes, etc., of said objects lying around said subject vehicle.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A practical object recognition method and a vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus using this method are provided which are efficient in data processing even when quite a lot of detection points data are obtained by using a scanning type laser radar. A laser radar scanningly irradiates electromagnetic waves around a subject vehicle on which the vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus is mounted, detects the electromagnetic waves reflected from objects lying around the subject vehicle, and outputs a plurality of directions of scanning irradiation and detected distances from the subject vehicle to the objects in the respective directions of scanning irradiation. A recognition unit detects, based on the detection results of the laser radar, a relative position and a relative speed of each of the objects lying around the subject vehicle with respect to the subject vehicle. The recognition unit stores whether or not detection points data (i.e., a direction of scanning irradiation and a detected distance in that direction) exists in each of M×N small regions into which X, Y coordinates with an X axis being set in a widthwise direction of the subject vehicle and a Y axis being set in a running direction of the subject vehicle are divided, in a two-dimensional array including a plurality of elements corresponding to the small regions, respectively. The recognition unit performs arithmetic operations of multiplication and summation of the respective elements of the two-dimensional array while sequentially scanning a mask of a two-dimensional array comprising J×K (J<N, K<M) elements, and determines attributes such as positions, sizes, etc., of the objects lying around the subject vehicle.
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Citations
11 Claims
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1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus including:
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a radar for scanningly irradiating electromagnetic waves over a predetermined angular range around a subject vehicle on which said apparatus is mounted, detecting the electromagnetic waves reflected from objects lying around said subject vehicle, and outputting a plurality of directions of scanning irradiation and detected distances from said subject vehicle to said objects in the respective directions of scanning irradiation; and
a recognition unit for outputting, based on the detection results of said radar, a relative position and a relative speed, or a rate of change of the relative position, of each of said objects lying around said subject vehicle with respect to said subject vehicle;
said recognition unit comprising;
a detection points data storage section for storing therein whether or not detection points data in the form of a data pair comprising a direction of scanning irradiation and a detected distance in that direction output by said radar exists in each of M×
N small regions into which X, Y coordinates with an X axis being set in a widthwise direction of said subject vehicle and a Y axis being set in a running direction of said subject vehicle are divided, in a two-dimensional array including a plurality of elements corresponding to the small regions, respectively; and
an object detection section for performing arithmetic operations of multiplication and summation of the respective elements of said two-dimensional array representative of the presence or absence of the detection points data stored in said detection points data storage section while sequentially scanning a mask of a two-dimensional array comprising J×
K (J<
N, K<
M) elements, and determining, based on the results of the arithmetic operations, attributes such as positions, sizes, etc., of said objects lying around said subject vehicle. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus comprising:
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a radar for scanningly irradiating electromagnetic waves over a predetermined angular range around a subject vehicle on which said apparatus is mounted, detecting the electromagnetic waves reflected from objects lying around said subject vehicle, and outputting detected distances from said subject vehicle to said objects lying around said subject vehicle and directions of said objects from said subject vehicle; and
a recognition unit for outputting, based on the detection results of said radar, a relative position and a relative speed, or a rate of change of the relative position, of each of said objects lying around said subject vehicle with respect to said subject vehicle;
said recognition unit comprising;
an object detection section for detecting positions of said objects by using detection points data obtained by said radar, and calculating object positional data representative of the positional data of said objects;
an object position estimator for estimating a position of each object detected in the past which should currently be detected, based on the past positional data of that object;
a window setter for setting a prescribed window in such a manner as to surround the estimated position of each object output by said object position estimator; and
an object tracker for determining the current positional data of an object by using the detection points data contained in the window set by said window setter, and calculating a relative speed of that object to said subject vehicle by using the positional data of that object detected in the past. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11)
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Specification