Patent Document ID: 20160146602
Application ID: 14947941
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A distance detection device capable of detecting a distance to an object in a plurality of images captured by image capturing sections comprising: a pixel cost calculation section capable of calculating, for every reference pixel, a pixel cost on the basis of a difference between pixel information of a reference pixel in a reference image and pixel information of a comparative pixel in a comparative image in the captured images of the image acquiring sections while switching the reference image and the comparative image, where the reference image is an image in a plurality of the captured images, and the comparative image is the images other than the reference image; a minimum cost pixel calculation section capable of calculating, for every reference pixel, a parallax cost which represents a cost regarding a change amount of the parallax, the parallax representing a coordinate difference between a reference pixel in the reference image and a comparative pixel in the comparative image, and the minimum cost pixel calculation section calculating a minimum total cost for a combination of each reference pixel and each comparative pixel, the minimum total cost representing a sum of the pixel cost and the parallax cost; a corresponding point setting section capable of calculating a relationship of a corresponding point between each reference pixel and its corresponding comparative pixel in the comparative image; an object extracting section capable of extracting an object from each of the captured images on the basis of the relationship of the corresponding point between each reference pixel and its corresponding comparative point; an image coordinate group acquiring section capable of calculating an image coordinate group which represents a coordinate of the object in each of the captured images forming a first captured image group and a second captured image group, the first captured image group comprising a plurality of the captured images obtained every reference period, the second captured image group comprising images obtained by shifting the reference period of the captured images by an asynchronous timing; and a distance calculation section capable of calculating a distance to the object in each of the image coordinate group on the basis of a relationship between the first captured image group and the second captured image group in which the first captured image group is shifted from the second captured image group by the asynchronous timing.