Patent ID: 6370261
Filing Date: 2002-04-09
Classification: G01S,G06K,G06T,H04N

Abstract:
A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus having a stereoscopic image detecting unit for detecting a stereoscopic image of solid objects around a self vehicle, an image processor for processing said image into a distance image and a plurality of microprocessors for recognizing said solid objects based on said distance image, comprising:wall surface detecting means for dividing positional data of said solid objects into groups and for detecting a wall surface formed along a boundary of a road based on said grouped positional data of said solid objects, said detecting means being responsive to forward and lateral distances of images for grouping images and determining gradients of image data; wall surface model forming means for interconnecting a plurality of nodes and for forming a wall surface model based on said interconnected nodes to express an outline of said wall surface, a wall surface being identified by a gradient; wall surface model correcting means for correcting said wall surface model based on said grouped positional data of said solid objects; wherein said wall surface model correcting means comprises means for applying a pattern matching to said grouped positional data to search a position of said wall surface corresponding to said respective nodes, and means for correcting coordinates of said nodes based on said position of said wall surface; and wherein said pattern matching uses a wall surface pattern having weight coefficients, values of said weight coefficients being positive on one side of a central point and negative on an opposite side thereof, wherein absolute values of the weight coefficients become smaller with increasing distance from the central point.