Patent ID: 8193806

Claim:
An object detecting apparatus that detects an object including a magnetic body, the object detecting apparatus comprising: a detection signal acquiring unit that acquires a detection signal including a signal indicative of an object based on a magnetic signal generated in a magnetic body receiving an alternating magnetic field; a disturbance source detection signal storage unit that stores, in advance, a detection signal of a disturbance source being preassigned as a reference, as a reference disturbance source detection signal, wherein the disturbance source includes a magnetic body that generates a disturbance component with respect to the detected signal including the signal indicative of the object, and the reference disturbance source detection signal has been acquired by the detection signal acquiring unit by exposing the disturbance source to the alternating magnetic field; a determining unit that determines whether or not the detection signal acquired by the detection signal acquiring unit contains the disturbance component; an amplitude correction unit that, when the determining unit determines that the disturbance component is contained in the detection signal, corrects an amplitude of the reference disturbance source detection signal read out of the disturbance source detection signal storage unit, so as to correspond to an amplitude of the detection signal acquired by the detection signal acquiring unit, to generate an amplitude-corrected disturbance source detection signal; a disturbance component suppression unit that generates a determination signal by suppressing the disturbance component contained in the detection signal based on the detection signal acquired by the detection signal acquiring unit and the amplitude-corrected disturbance source detection signal generated by the amplitude correction unit; and an object determination unit that determines whether or not the object receiving the alternating magnetic field is the object to be detected based on the determination signal generated by the disturbance component suppression unit.