Patent ID: 8630793

Claim:
A vehicle controller, comprising: a vehicle-mounted camera that captures an image in front of a vehicle; a vehicle speed sensor that detects vehicle speed information; a steering angle sensor that detects steering angle information; a yaw rate sensor that detects yaw rate information; and a processing unit that decides one vehicle control method from a plurality of vehicle control methods and controls an actuator with the decided vehicle control method, wherein the vehicle-mounted camera includes: an image acquisition section that acquires an image in front of the vehicle; a lane recognition section that recognizes a lane from the acquired image; a control parameter estimation section that estimates road curvature indicating a degree of curve of a road, a yaw angle indicating relative orientation between the vehicle and a driving lane, and a lateral position indicating a relative position therebetween; and an area-specific confidence calculation section that divides the image acquired into a plurality of areas on a basis of the acquired image and the recognized lane, calculates confidence for each divided area and outputs area-specific confidence information, the processing unit includes a vehicle control section that decides a vehicle control method in accordance with the area-specific confidence information, the vehicle control section of the processing unit decides a vehicle control method in accordance with the area-specific confidence information and at least one of the road curvature, the yaw angle and the lateral position, the area-specific confidence calculation section includes: an area determination section that divides the image into a far area and a near area on the basis of the lane recognized by the lane recognition section; an area confidence calculation section that calculates confidence for each area divided by the area determination section on a basis of the image acquired and outputs the calculated confidence as the area-specific confidence information; and an area confidence correction section that corrects the area-specific confidence information on a basis of external information input, and when each of the far area and the near area has the area-specific confidence information of a predetermined threshold or more, the vehicle control section decides a vehicle control method in a curve control mode, and when the far area has the area-specific confidence information less than a predetermined threshold and the near area has the area-specific confidence information of a predetermined threshold or more, the vehicle control section decides a vehicle control method in a straight control mode.