Patent ID: 8724094

Claim:
An apparatus for recognizing presence of an object, the apparatus being mounted on a vehicle; the apparatus comprising: beam scanning means for scanning a beam-shaped electromagnetic wave toward a field of view outside the vehicle, the beam-shaped electromagnetic wave being transmitted repetitively at intervals two-dimensionally in both a width direction and multiple layers in a height direction of the vehicle, a reflected electromagnetic wave from the object being received by the beam scanning means; detecting means for detecting a reflection intensity of each of the transmitted electromagnetic waves and a distance between the apparatus and object based on a reception signal of the received of the electromagnetic wave, results detected by the detecting means showing detected reflection intensities and detected distance; characteristic obtaining means for obtaining, based on the results detected by the detecting means, characteristics presented by frequency distributions of the distance and intensity frequency distributions of the reception signal, respectively, in the multiple layers in the height direction, the characteristics depending on an angle of the electromagnetic wave to a road on which the vehicle travels; and determining means for determining that the characteristics obtained by the characteristic obtaining means have been obtained from the road when the characteristics meet a predetermined requirement.