Patent ID: 7403639
Filing Date: 2008-07-22
Classification: B60Q,B60R,G06K

Abstract:
1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus that extracts a body present in the surroundings of a vehicle as an object, based on an image captured by an infrared imaging device, comprising: a binarized object extraction device that extracts a binarized object from image data obtained by binarizing a gray scale image of the image; a search region setting device that sets a search region including a bottom end of the binarized object extracted by the binarized object extraction device, on the gray scale image; a horizontal edge detection device that detects a horizontal edge in the search region set by the search region setting device; a horizontal edge width calculation device that calculates a width of the horizontal edge detected by the horizontal edge detection device, or a status quantity related to the width; and an object type determination device that determines a type of the object based on the width of the horizontal edge or the status quantity related to the width calculated by the horizontal edge width calculation device; and a pedestrian recognition device that recognizes a pedestrian present in the surroundings of a vehicle based on the image, the pedestrian recognition device executing pedestrian recognition processing on the object when the object is determined to be something other than a manmade structure, or to be a pedestrian by the object type determination device, wherein the search region set by the search region setting device extends horizontally below the bottom end of the binarized object, and the width of the search region is excessively greater than a predetermined value representing a person's shoulder width.