Vehicle-surroundings monitoring device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9280824-B2
Application number	US-201013498958-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 27, 2010
Priority date	Sep 30, 2009
Publication date	Mar 8, 2016
Grant date	Mar 8, 2016

Abstract

A camera-orientation estimation unit estimates the amount of change in camera orientation on the basis of vehicle speed changes obtained from a vehicle-information acquirer. A distance-information update decision unit decides, on the basis of the amount of change in camera orientation, whether to update distance information by computing new distance information in a distance-computation unit or to update distance information using distance information stored in a distance-information memory unit. If the distance-information update decision unit has decided to update distance information by computing new distance information, a display device displays distance information that the distance-computation unit computes from a real-time image. If the distance-information update decision unit has decided to update using past stored distance information, the display device displays past distance information read from the distance-information memory unit.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus comprising:
an imaging device that has a camera, the imaging device images a situation around a vehicle using the camera;
a vehicle information acquirer that acquires a vehicle speed signal from the vehicle to obtain vehicle speed information;
a camera attitude estimator that calculates acceleration of the vehicle based on the vehicle speed information, estimates a pitch angle representing change in vehicle behavior based on the calculated acceleration, and estimates an attitude of the camera to be the pitch angle;
a distance calculator that extracts an edge of a part where an object touches the road surface, and calculates a distance to the object based on relationships between captured image coordinates and coordinates of each point on the ground wherein the relationships is determined from height above a ground, optical axis direction, and characteristics of the camera and the optical axis direction is calculated from the estimated attitude of the camera;
distance information storage that stores distance information calculated by the distance calculator together with image data acquired by the imaging device and time information;
a distance information update determiner that determines that distance information to the object is to be updated using distance information calculated by the distance calculator when a change amount of a camera attitude estimated by the camera attitude estimator is below a threshold value, and the distance information update determiner determines that distance information to the object is to be updated so as to shift the distance information previously stored in the distance information storage by a vehicle movement amount obtained from the vehicle speed information when the change amount of the camera attitude estimated by the camera attitude estimator is greater than or equal to the threshold value;
an output information generator that generates output information to display an image containing the object and superimpose a distance to the object in accordance with contents determined by the distance information update determiner; and
a display device that, when the distance information update determiner determines to update the distance information by shifting the previous distance information by the vehicle movement amount, displays a first image containing the object using the image data previously stored in the distance information storage, superimposes the distance to the object on the first image, and displays a second image representing a caution area between the object and the vehicle on the first image so that a driver notices a new obstacle that is not contained in the first image.

Assignees

• Fukuda Hisaya
• Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd

Inventors

• Fukuda Hisaya

Classifications

• G08G1/166

  for active traffic, e.g. moving vehicles, pedestrians, bikes · CPC title

• G06T2207/30264

  Parking · CPC title

• G06T7/73 Primary

  using feature-based methods · CPC title

• G08G1/165

  for passive traffic, e.g. including static obstacles, trees · CPC title

• G08G1/168

  Driving aids for parking, e.g. acoustic or visual feedback on parking space · CPC title