Obstacle recognition device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11417115-B2
Application number	US-202017069078-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 13, 2020
Priority date	Oct 14, 2019
Publication date	Aug 16, 2022
Grant date	Aug 16, 2022

Abstract

An obstacle recognition device of a vehicle provided with a camera capturing an image around the vehicle, includes an acquiring unit sequentially acquiring the image captured by the camera; a feature point extracting unit extracting a plurality of feature points of an object included in the image; a calculation unit calculating each motion distance of the plurality of feature points between the image previously acquired and the image currently acquired by the acquiring unit; a first determination unit determining whether each motion distance of the feature points is larger than or equal to a first threshold; a second determination unit determining whether each motion distance of the feature points is larger than or equal to a second threshold; and an obstacle recognition unit recognizing an obstacle.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An obstacle recognition device of a vehicle provided with a camera that captures images around the vehicle, detecting an obstacle based on the images captured by the camera, the obstacle recognition device comprising:
an acquiring unit that sequentially acquires the images repeatedly captured by the camera;
a feature point extracting unit that extracts a plurality of feature points of an object included in the images sequentially acquired by the acquiring unit;
a calculation unit that calculates each motion distance of the plurality of feature points on the images between an image previously acquired by the acquiring unit and an image currently acquired by the acquiring unit;
a first determination unit that determines whether each motion distance of the plurality of feature points is larger than or equal to a first threshold;
a second determination unit that determines whether each motion distance of the plurality of feature points is larger than or equal to a second threshold; and
an obstacle recognition unit that recognizes an obstacle,
wherein
the second threshold is set for each feature point such that the farther the location of the plurality of feature points from the vehicle along a longitudinal direction in a respective image, the smaller the second threshold is; and
the obstacle recognition unit is configured to determine feature points to represent an obstacle that satisfy a determination result in which the first determination unit determines that the motion distance is larger than or equal to the first threshold and the second determination unit determines that the motion distance is larger than or equal to the second threshold.

2. The obstacle recognition device according to claim 1 further comprising a movement determination unit that determines whether the vehicle is moving or not,
wherein
the acquiring unit sequentially acquires the images repeatedly captured by the camera in response to a determination in which the movement determination unit determines that the vehicle is moving.

3. The obstacle recognition device according to claim 1 further comprising a moving object recognizing unit that recognizes a moving object around the vehicle in accordance with the plurality of feature points,
wherein
the obstacle recognition unit determines the feature points satisfying the determination result and being not recognized as the moving object by the moving object recognizing unit, to be the obstacle.

4. The obstacle recognition device according to claim 1 , wherein
the camera is configured to capture an image around the vehicle through a wide-angle lens; and
the second threshold is set to be larger as locations of the plurality of feature points approaches towards one side of the image from a center portion of the image in a width direction or approaches towards the other side of the image in the width direction.

Assignees

• Denso Corp
• Toyota Motor Co Ltd

Inventors

• Osada Koki
• Hiromitsu Takayuki
• Fujimoto Tomoyuki
• Miwa Takuya
• Hamamoto Yutaka
• Fukuman Masumi
• Kida Akihiro
• Sugihara Kunihiro

Classifications

• G06T2207/10016

  Video; Image sequence · CPC title

• G06V20/58 Primary

  Recognition of moving objects or obstacles, e.g. vehicles or pedestrians; Recognition of traffic objects, e.g. traffic signs, traffic lights or roads · CPC title

• G06T7/269

  using gradient-based methods · CPC title

• G06T2207/30261

  Obstacle · CPC title

• G06T7/246

  using feature-based methods, e.g. the tracking of corners or segments · CPC title