Patent ID: 7894631

Claim:
An obstacle detection apparatus for detecting an obstacle based on an image of periphery of a vehicle and a distance to an obstacle present in the vehicle's periphery, the apparatus comprising: distance determining means for determining, in association with traveling of the vehicle along a direction, a distance to the obstacle present in a direction perpendicular to the vehicle traveling direction; image inputting means for obtaining a peripheral image having a view angle including the obstacle, in association with the traveling of the vehicle; subject-vehicle position specifying means for sequentially specifying a present position of the vehicle which changes in association the traveling of the vehicle; first-plane setting means for setting, as a first plane and based on said distance and said subject-vehicle position, a face of the obstacle which extends perpendicular to the horizontal plane and extends, at the same time, along the traveling direction of the vehicle; plane-edge estimating means for estimating a plane edge of said first plane relative to the vehicle moving direction, based on said distance and said position of the vehicle; image recognition area setting means for setting, as an image recognition area, an area included in the peripheral image and including said plane edge; image recognizing means for image-recognizing a shape characteristics of the obstacle in the image recognition area from the peripheral image; and three-dimensional shape recognizing means for recognizing the obstacle three-dimensionally, based on said first plane and result of the image recognition made by said image recognizing means.