Patent ID: 9726883
Date: 2017-08-08
CPC Classifications: G02B,G06K,G06T,G08G,H04N

Claim:
1. A three-dimensional object detection device comprising: an image capturing device mounted in a vehicle, and provided with a lens and an image capturing element, the image capturing device forming a video image of a predetermined area; an image conversion unit programmed to perform viewpoint conversion of captured images obtained by the image capturing device into bird's-eye view images; a three-dimensional object detection unit programmed to detect a presence of the three-dimensional object based on differential waveform information in which the differential waveform information is generated by aligning, in a bird's-eye view, positions of bird's-eye view images from different points in time obtained by the image conversion unit, and counting a number of pixels indicating a predetermined difference in a differential image of aligned bird's-eye view images along a direction of collapsing of a three-dimensional object when viewpoint conversion of the bird's-eye view images has been performed to form a frequency distribution; a three-dimensional object assessment unit programmed to access whether or not a three-dimensional object detected by the three-dimensional object detection unit is another vehicle; a first foreign matter detection unit programmed to detect whether or not foreign matter has adhered to the lens based on a change over time in luminance values for each predetermined pixel in the image capturing element; a second foreign matter detection unit programmed to extract a first maximum from differential waveform information generated at at least one first timing by the three-dimensional object detection unit, programmed to acquire a reference value based on the first maximum that was extracted, programmed to extract a second maximum corresponding to the first maximum in the bird's-eye view image from the differential waveform information newly generated at at least one second timings after the at least one first timing, programmed to acquire an evaluation value based on the second maximum, and programmed to detect whether or not foreign matter has adhered to the lens based on a change over time in a difference between the evaluation value and the reference value; and a controller programmed to suppress, suppresses the detection of the three-dimensional object from an image of the predetermined area and the assessment that the three-dimensional object is the other vehicle, when the first foreign matter detection unit and the second foreign matter detection unit have detected foreign matter that has adhered to the lens.