Stereo camera device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2021042945-A1
Application number	US-201916964221-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jan 31, 2019
Priority date	Feb 28, 2018
Publication date	Feb 11, 2021
Grant date	—

Abstract

An objective of the present invention is, in a stereo camera device, to determine an accurate image position in a direction of progress to detect at an early stage an obstacle or a preceding vehicle on a road. Provided is a stereo camera device for measuring the distance to a solid object from images photographed with a plurality of cameras, said device characterized by: a wide-angle image cropping part for cropping a portion of the images; a distance image cropping part for cropping and enlarging a portion of the images; a road shape determination part for determining a road shape, including slope information, of a road being traveled; and determining, on the basis of the road shape in a prescribed distance, which has been derived with the road shape determination part, the cropping position and/or range of the distance image cropping part.

First claim

1 . A stereo camera device that measures a distance of a three-dimensional object from images captured by a plurality of cameras, comprising:
a wide-angle image cropping unit that crops a part of the image; a distant image cropping unit that crops a part of the image, and enlarges the cropped part; and a road shape determination unit that determines a road shape including gradient information of a road on which a vehicle is traveling, wherein at least any one of a cropping position and a cropping range of the distant image cropping unit is decided based on the road shape at a predetermined distance which is obtained by the road shape determination unit.

2 . The stereo camera device according to claim 1 , wherein the road shape determination unit determines a shape of a road surface on which the vehicle is traveling by using disparity information generated from a wide-angle image cropped by the wide-angle image cropping unit.

3 . The stereo camera device according to claim 1 , wherein the road shape is information on a shape and a gradient of the road using map information.

4 . The stereo camera device according to claim 1 , wherein
route data that stores a traveling route of a host vehicle is provided, and the distant image cropping unit generates the distant image on a traveling road by using route information of the route data.

5 . The stereo camera device according to claim 1 , wherein the distant image cropping unit generates the distant image obtained by enlarging a curve direction of the road obtained by the road shape determination unit.

6 . The stereo camera device according to claim 1 , wherein the distant image cropping unit changes a size or a resolution of the distant image according to a host vehicle speed.

Assignees

• Hitachi Automotive Systems Ltd

Inventors

• Matsuo Shigeru
• Sasamoto Manabu
• Nonaka Shinichi

Classifications

• H04N23/60

  Control of cameras or camera modules · CPC title

• G06V20/58

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

• G06T2207/30261

  Obstacle · CPC title

• G06T7/593 Primary

  from stereo images · CPC title

• B60W40/072

  Curvature of the road · CPC title