Vehicle information providing apparatus

• US 20030083790A1
• Filed: 10/17/2002
• Published: 05/01/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Arriver Software AB (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Honda Motor Company)
• Inventors: Tsuji, Takayuki, Nagaoka, Nobuharu, Hattori, Hiroshi, Watanabe, Masahito
• Granted Patent: US 7,141,796 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/254 involving subtraction of images
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/182 Network patterns, e.g. roads or rivers
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/58 Recognition of moving objects or obstacles, e.g. vehicles or pedestrians; Recognition of traffic objects, e.g. traffic signs, traffic lights or roads

Abstract

The invention provides a vehicle information providing apparatus that determines and displays the range of presence of a person based on the characteristics of images recorded by infrared cameras. The image processing unit carries out brightness change search processing in the infrared camera image zone represented by a gray scale using a search area wherein the size of a first detected area detected by binarization and correlation operation serves as the reference. In addition, the parallax between the first detected area and the searched area having a change in brightness is compared, a search area having a parallax that differs from that of the first searched area is eliminated, and the search area having a parallax identical to that of the first detected area is provided a highlighted display as an object identical to that of the fires detected area.

Claims

1. A vehicle information providing apparatus that displays images recorded by infrared cameras, comprising:

an extracted zone setting device that sets the present zone of a physical object detected by multivalued processing of said images as the extracted zone;

a search zone setting device that sets the search zone in the vicinity of said extracted zone; and

a physical object recognition device that searches for changes in brightness in said search zone, and provides a highlighted display of the zone where there is a change in brightness along with said extracted zone as the same physical object.

2. A vehicle information providing apparatus according to claim 1 comprising:

two infrared cameras; and

a parallax calculating device that finds the parallax of the images recorded by said two cameras; and

wherein

said physical object recognizing device provides a highlighted display of the zone having a change in brightness and a parallax identical to said extracted zone as an identical physical body.

3. A vehicle information providing apparatus, wherein, in the case that the search area set adjacent to the upper or lower extracted zone exceeds the range of said image, said physical object recognizing device stops searching for changes in brightness.