Patent ID: 8873803

Claim:
A road-shoulder detecting device comprising: a distance information calculating portion that calculates a presence or absence of a physical object and a distance from a subject vehicle to the object from input three-dimensional image information about an environment outside of the vehicle; a vehicular road surface detecting portion that detects a vehicular road surface traveled by the subject vehicle from a distance image based on the calculated distance; a height difference calculating portion that measures a height difference between the detected vehicular road surface and an off-road region; and a discontinuity calculating portion that: i) separates a distance image based on the calculated distance into a plurality of image regions, ii) calculates whether a distance between any two of the image regions is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value, and iii) judges that the object is a road shoulder because a case in which the predetermined threshold value is reached or exceeded is regarded as discontinuous; and a road shoulder decision portion that makes a decision, based on the height difference measured by the height difference calculating portion or based on the road shoulder calculated by the discontinuity calculation portion, as to whether a road shoulder being a boundary between the vehicular road surface and the off-road region is a road shoulder occurring in a case where there is an off-road region lower than the vehicular road surface.