Patent Document ID: 9862318
Application ID: 14953848
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of determining the distance of an object from an automated vehicle, said method comprising: equipping an automated vehicle with a monocular image acquiring device, said device located on the automated vehicle at a predefined height above a plane of a road on which the automated vehicle travels; capturing images of an environment proximate to the vehicle, wherein the images of the environment are taken at time intervals by the device; classifying, by an image processing system, an object in the images; associating, by the image processing system, the object with an object-class; determining, by the image processing system, respective position data from the images using a pinhole camera model and based on the object-class, said position data indicative of a position of a reference point of the object with respect to the plane of the road in world coordinates; estimating a scaling factor of the pinhole camera model using a Bayes estimator on the position data as observations and under the assumption that the reference point of the object is located on the plane of the road with a predefined probability; and calculating a distance of the object from the automated vehicle based on the scaling factor using the pinhole camera model, wherein an angle of inclination is used as the position indication that a view ray adopts with respect to the plane of the road, said view ray leading from a center of the automated vehicle and projected perpendicular onto the plane of the road and from a fixed point arranged at a known distance therefrom to the reference point of the object.