Patent ID: 6618672
Filing Date: 2003-09-09
Classification: B60R,G08G

Abstract:
A vehicle-applied rear-and-side monitoring system, comprising:an image taking means for talking an image of rear-and-side view of a first vehicle traveling in a lane; a characteristic point extracting means for extracting at least one point as a characteristic point from an image of a second vehicle contained in a first image, taking at a first time-point, of said rear-and-side view, said second vehicle traveling at the rear of said first vehicle in said lane or in a neighboring lane of said lane; a corresponding point detecting means for detecting a corresponding point, corresponding to said characteristic point, in a second image taken at a second time-point following said first time-point; an optical flow forming means for forming an optical flow of said characteristic point of said second vehicle from a vector connecting said characteristic point and said corresponding point; and a dead angle area located vehicles-distance calculating means for calculating at least any one of a vehicles-distance between said first and second vehicles and a relative position therebetween after a time-point of disappearance of said optical flow outside an image plane of said image taking means on the basis of said optical flow formed just before said disappearance, wherein an approaching degree of said second vehicle traveling at the rear of said first vehicle in said lane or in said neighboring lane is monitored.