Patent ID: 8184159

Claim:
A forward looking vision system for a vehicle, comprising: a forward looking sensor configured to obtain a two-dimensional image of a space in front of the vehicle; a region identification element that divides the two-dimensional image into a plurality of regions, each region representing a portion of the space in front of the vehicle, the region identification element comprising; a sub-region location element that determines a plurality of subregions having homogenous characteristics within the two-dimensional image; and a clustering element that performs a clustering analysis to combine spatially proximate subregions having similar characteristics to form the plurality of regions; an image transform element that transforms the two-dimensional image to a three-dimensional coordinate system representing the space in front of the vehicle to calculate depth information for at least a portion of the image; and a plurality of expert systems, each expert system having at least one associated region and each region having at least one associated expert system, that control respective vehicle functions according to data from their respective associated at least one associated regions and the calculated depth information wherein the region identification element is operative to process sub-regions above a horizon line of the two-dimensional image separately from sub-regions beneath the horizon line such that the clustering element performs separate clustering analyses for the area above the horizon line to detect a sky region and the area below the horizon line to detect a road region, with any portion of the image not included in the sky region and road region combined into a side region.