Monitoring System

• US 20080181461A1
• Filed: 01/30/2008
• Published: 07/31/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Subaru Corp.
• Original Assignee: Fuji Heavy Industries Limited (Subaru Corp.)
• Inventors: Saito, Toru, Tanzawa, Tsutomu
• Granted Patent: US 8,055,017 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/584 of vehicle lights or traffic lights

Abstract

There is provided a monitoring system including an image capture module for capturing an image, an object detecting unit for detecting an object from the image, a monitoring range setting unit for setting a monitoring range in a side of the object on the image, a determining unit for determining the existence of a light source within the monitoring range, and an adjusting unit for adjusting one of an exposure amount of the image capture and a luminance of a pixel output from the image capture when the determining unit determines the existence of the light source.

Claims

1. A monitoring system comprising:

an image capture for capturing an image;

an object detecting unit for detecting an object from a captured image;

a monitoring range setting unit for setting a monitoring range in a side of the object based on an edge portion of the object;

a determining unit for determining an existence of a light source within the monitoring range; and

an adjusting unit for adjusting at least one of an exposure of the image capture and a luminance of a pixel output from the image capture when the determining unit determines that the light source exists,

wherein a transverse width of the object is detected and update when the determining unit determines that the light source does not exist, and

wherein when the determining unit determines that the light source exists, the monitoring range setting unit sets the monitoring range based on an edge position on an opposite side of the object to a side thereof where the light source exists and the transverse width of the object which is stored.

2. The monitoring system according to claim 1,

wherein the determining unit determines that the light source exists when detecting a predetermined number or more of pixels whose luminance exceeds a predetermined threshold value in the monitoring range.

3. The monitoring system according to claim 1,

wherein the determining unit determines that the light source exists by detecting pixels whose luminance exceeds a first predetermined threshold value in the monitoring range, calculating the number of pixels in a pixel area where adjacent pixels of the detected pixels are gathered, and determining that the calculated number of pixels exceeds a second predetermined threshold value.

4. The monitoring system according to claim 1,

wherein when the existence of the light source is determined, the adjusting unit adjusts step by step at least one of the exposure amount of the image capture and the luminance of the pixel output from the image capture, until it is determined that the light source does not exist in sampling cycles thereafter or until an amount of adjustment reaches a preset limit amount.

5. The monitoring system according to any one of claim 1, further comprising:

a distance detector for calculating a distance in an actual space from the image to the object detected by the object detecting unit,

wherein when the existence of the light source is determined, the distance detector calculates the distance based on positional information of the object which excludes positional information of the object on the side where the light source exists.

6. The monitoring system according to claim 1,

wherein the object detecting unit detects a transverse traveling speed of the object based on a position change of the object in the actual space within a sampling cycle,

wherein when the existence of the light source is determined, the object detecting unit detects the transverse traveling speed based on the positional information of the object which excludes the positional information of the object on the side of the object where the light source exists.