Patent ID: 8218816

Claim:
A moving object detecting device comprising: a stereo camera apparatus that takes a set of images of an object and determines a parallax between the object and the stereo camera apparatus; a range sensor that scans the object and utilizes the parallax to measure a distance from the device to an object; an image processing component that performs an image processing on the images captured by the stereo camera apparatus to extract a tracking target, which is a moving object to be tracked, from the image and to estimate a distance and a direction from the device to the tracking target based on the image; a congestion degree measuring component that sets a congestion degree measuring region around a moving object estimated point where a moving object is previously detected and measures a congestion degree represented by a ratio C of the number of detection points detected by the range sensor in the congestion degree measuring region to a total number of scanning lines of the range sensor passing through within the congestion degree measuring region; and a calculation component that obtains a fusion estimation result by performing a calculation using (a) a first moving object tracking result obtained by an output from the range sensor, (b) a second moving object tracking result obtained by the image processing by the image processing component, and (c) a fusion ratio W 1 that is represented by the following expression (1) where α, β, and n are arbitrary constants: (1) W 1 =αC n +β.