VEHICLE SURROUNDINGS MONITORING DEVICE

• US 20130243261A1
• Filed: 06/22/2011
• Published: 09/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Arriver Software AB (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda Motor Company)
• Inventors: Matsuda, Kodai, Nagaoka, Nobuharu, Aimura, Makoto
• Granted Patent: US 8,965,056 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/106
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/166 for active traffic, e.g. moving vehicles, pedestrians, bikes

Abstract

When it is determined that a type of a physical body in real space corresponding to an image portion is a crossing pedestrian, a distance calculating unit 13 performs a first distance calculating process of calculating a distance between a vehicle 1 and the physical body, on the basis of a correlative relationship between the distance from the vehicle 1 set on assumption of a height of the pedestrian and a height of the image portion, according to the height of the image portion. When it is determined that the type of the physical body is not the crossing pedestrian, then the distance calculating unit 13 performs a second distance calculating process which calculates the distance between the physical body and the vehicle, on the basis of a change in size of the image portions of the physical body extracted from time-series captured images.

Claims

1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring device, comprising:

a distance calculating unit which calculates, on a basis of a captured image by a single camera mounted on a vehicle, a distance between the vehicle and a physical body in real space corresponding to an image portion extracted from the captured image; and

a physical body type judging unit which judges a type of the physical body in real space corresponding to the image portion;

wherein the distance calculating unit

determines a change in shape of the image portion or a change in shape of the physical body in real space corresponding to the image portion, in a predetermined period,

executes a first distance calculating process, when the change in shape exceeds a predetermined level, of calculating a distance between the physical body and the vehicle, on a basis of a correlative relationship between a distance from the vehicle in real space set on assumption of the type of the physical body and a size of the image portion in the captured image, according to the size of the image portion of the physical body extracted from the captured image, and

executes a second distance calculating process, when the change in shape is equal to or less than the predetermined level, of calculating the distance between the physical body and the vehicle, on the basis of the change in size of image portions of the physical body extracted from time-series captured images by the camera.

2. The vehicle surroundings monitoring device according to claim 1,

wherein the physical body is a pedestrian crossing a road, and

the distance calculating unit calculates, in the first distance calculating process, of calculating the distance between the physical body in real space corresponding to the image portion and the vehicle, on a basis of a correlative relationship between the distance from the vehicle in real space and a height of the image portion in the captured image, set given that a height of the pedestrian is a predetermined value, according to the height of the image portion extracted from the captured image.