Patent ID: 7646888

Claim:
A vehicle tunnel detecting device comprising: an image pickup unit for picking up an image of an obliquely upper area with respect to a travel direction of a vehicle; an obliquely upper area brightness reduction detecting unit for judging whether an average brightness of the image of the obliquely upper area with respect to the travel direction which is achieved by the image pickup unit is lower than a predetermined value; a high brightness area extracting unit for binarizing the image of the obliquely upper area with respect to the travel direction which is achieved by the image pickup unit when it is judged by the obliquely upper area brightness reduction detecting unit that the average brightness of the image of the obliquely upper area is lower than the predetermined value, and extracting a high brightness area having a brightness that is higher than a predetermined brightness; and a tunnel identifying unit for identifying a tunnel when it is judged by the high brightness area extracting unit that at least one of a size and number of high brightness areas having a predetermined brightness or more satisfies a predetermined condition.