Mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus, mobile body surrounding surveillance method, control program, and readable recording medium

• US 7,250,593 B2
• Filed: 02/04/2005
• Issued: 07/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/06/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Nagasawa, Shunsuke
• Primary Examiner(s): LE, QUE TAN
• Application Number:
  US11/049,711
• Publication Number:
  US 20050189471A1
• Time in Patent Office: 907 Days
• Field of Search: 250/208.1, 250/221, 250/201.1, 250/559.05, 340435-438
• US Class Current: 250/208.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/254 involving subtraction of images
• 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

A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus comprises an image capturing section for capturing an image of a surrounding of a mobile body, a setting section for setting a landscape, band-like particular region parallel to a frame image with respect to image data captured by the image capturing section, an extraction section for taking image data of the particular region every one or more frame images captured in time series by the image capturing section, and extracting movement vector information based on the image data of the particular region, and a detection section for detecting another mobile body present in the surrounding of the mobile body based on the movement vector information.

Claims

1. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus, comprising:

an image capturing section for capturing an image of a surrounding of a mobile body;

a setting section for setting a landscape, band-like particular region parallel to a frame image with respect to image data captured by the image capturing section;

an extraction section for taking image data of the particular region every one or more frame images captured in time series by the image capturing section and extracting movement vector information based on the image data of the particular region; and

a detection section for detecting another mobile body present in the surrounding of the mobile body based on the movement vector information.

2. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the image capturing section is attached to a position of the mobile body such that the image capturing section can capture an image in a rear and side direction.

3. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the setting section sets the particular region in the captured image data so that a captured image of the mobile body is not included in the image data and at least a portion of a captured image of the other mobile body is included in the image data.

4. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the particular region is divided into a plurality of regions, and the extraction section compares a sum value of current image data with a sum value of previous image data time t (t>

0) before for each divided region, extracts one of the divided regions of the previous image data having a minimum difference value between the sum values for each divided region of the current image data, and determines a position of the extracted divided region of the previous image data as a position of the divided region of the current image data time t before, and extracts a positional relationship of the extracted divided region of the previous image data and the divided region of the current image data as the movement vector information.

5. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the extraction section determines whether the position of the divided region of the current image data is shifted to the left or right of the position of the extracted divided region of the previous image data to determine the movement vector information.

6. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection section detects a relative movement state of the mobile body and the other mobile body based on the movement vector information.

7. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection section reads out the movement vector information for each divided region obtained by dividing the particular region into a plural number, and when an incremented value of a vector number in a predetermined direction of the read movement vector information is greater than a determination threshold, detects that there is the other mobile body approaching the mobile body.

8. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the detection section further comprises a change informing section for outputting a warning, depending on the relative movement state between the mobile body and the other mobile body.

9. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a storage section for temporarily storing an extraction process result of the extraction section,

wherein the detection section reads out the movement vector information from the storage section to use the movement vector information for the detection process.

10. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the extraction section comprises:

a division section for dividing image data of the particular region which is a portion of image data of the captured frame image into a plurality of divided regions;

a sum value calculation section for calculating a sum of image data values for each divided region;

a divided region extraction section for extracting one of the divided regions of previous image data having a minimum difference in sum value between the previous image data and current image data, for each divided region of the current image data;

a left/right determination section for determining whether the divided region of the current image data which gives the minimum difference is located to the left or right of the extracted divided region of the previous image data; and

a movement vector information determination section for determining the movement vector information as left movement vector information when the divided region of the current image data is located to the left and as right movement vector information when the divided region of the current image data is located to the right.

11. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the detection section further comprises:

a movement vector number calculation section for detecting whether the movement vector information indicates “

left”

or “

right”

for each of all of the divided regions and incrementing a movement vector number when a specified one of “

left” and

“

right”

is indicated; and

an other mobile body approaching determination section for determining that there is the other mobile body approaching the mobile body when an incremented value of the movement vector number exceeds a determination threshold.

12. A mobile body surrounding surveillance apparatus according to claim 1, wherein:

the setting section sets a plurality of particular regions with respect to the image data captured by the image capturing section, the plurality of particular regions having the same position in a horizontal direction and different positions in a vertical direction;

the extraction section takes the image data of each particular region and extracts the movement vector information;

the detection section increments the vector number when the movement vector information of each divided region in the plurality of particular regions having the same position in the horizontal direction and the different positions in the vertical direction; and

when a total of the incremented values of all of the divided regions is greater than a predetermined determination threshold, it is determined that there is the other mobile body approaching the mobile body.

13. A mobile body surrounding surveillance method, comprising:

causing an image capturing section to capture image data of a surrounding of a mobile body in time series as frame images;

setting a landscape, band-like particular region parallel to the frame image every one or more of the captured frame images;

taking image data of the particular region every one or more of the captured frame images and extracting movement vector information based on the image data of the particular region; and

detecting another mobile body present in the surrounding of the mobile body based on the movement vector information.

14. A mobile body surrounding surveillance method according to claim 13, wherein the extraction step comprises:

taking image data of the set particular region which is a portion of the captured frame image;

dividing the particular region into a plurality of divided regions;

calculating a sum of image data values for each divided region;

storing the sum value of each divided region as current image data into a storage section;

reading the sum value data as previous image data from the storage section for each divided region time t before;

comparing the sum value of the current image data and the sum value of the previous image data and extracting one of the divided regions of the previous image data having a minimum difference in sum value between the previous image data and the current image data, for each divided region of the current image data;

determining whether the divided region of the current image data which gives the minimum difference is located to the left or right of the extracted divided region of the previous image data; and

determining the movement vector information as left movement vector information when the divided region of the current image data is located to the left and as right movement vector information when the divided region of the current image data is located to the right.

15. A mobile body surrounding surveillance method according to claim 13, wherein the detection step further comprises:

detecting whether the movement vector information indicates “

left”

or “

right”

for each of all of the divided regions and incrementing a movement vector number when a specified one of “

left” and

“

right”

is indicated; and

determining that there is the other mobile body approaching the mobile body when an incremented value of the movement vector number exceeds a determination threshold.

16. A computer-readable recording medium having recorded thereon a control program for causing a computer to execute a mobile body surrounding surveillance method according to claim 13.