Patent ID: 8212878

Claim:
An on-vehicle camera calibration apparatus comprising: an on-vehicle camera; a road surface sign detection unit configured to photograph a road surface by way of the on-vehicle camera and to detect a road surface sign; a characteristic amount extraction unit configured to calculate a characteristic point or a characteristic line of the road surface sign from an image detected by the road surface sign detection unit, the characteristic amount extraction unit recognizing an image of the road surface sign photographed by the on-vehicle camera through image processing, and deriving a characteristic amount corresponding to the characteristic point or the characteristic line from characteristic amounts defined in advance for every kind of road surface sign; a camera parameter calculation unit configured to calculate camera parameters from a characteristic amount of the road surface sign extracted by the characteristic amount extraction unit and a size of the characteristic amount of the road surface sign derived from a road surface sign database, the camera parameters including an installation height and installation angle of the on-vehicle camera in photographing; and a camera parameter calibration unit configured to perform optical axis calibration control of the on-vehicle camera by the camera parameters output by camera parameter calculation unit, the camera parameter calculation unit extracting two parallel segments from the characteristic amount of the road surface sign extracted by the characteristic amount extraction unit, deriving at least two vanishing points and calculating camera parameters, and outputting the camera parameters to the camera parameter calibration unit.