Patent Document ID: 7925441
Application ID: 11362052
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A vehicle periphery monitoring apparatus, comprising: a camera installed in a front or rear of a vehicle, for picking up images of a side view of the vehicle; a feature point detecting unit that detects feature points in the side images and calculating motion vectors of the detected feature points; an approaching object detecting unit that detects an object having a vector in such a direction as to approach the vehicle in the side images as an approaching object based on the calculated motion vectors of the feature points; a feature point tracking unit that tracks the feature points of the detected approaching object; a passage time calculating unit that calculates a time at which the approaching object passes the front or rear of the vehicle from the feature points of the approaching object tracked by said feature point tracking unit; and an approach notifying unit that notifies a driver that the approaching object is approaching, the approaching notifying unit including first notifying means and second notifying means, wherein said approaching notifying unit notifies the driver that the approaching object is approaching only by the first notifying means when a length of the calculated time until which the approaching object is expected to pass the front or rear of the vehicle is shorter than a first predetermined time, and notifies the driver at least by the second notifying means when the length of the calculated time is shorter than a second predetermined time shorter than the first predetermined time, and further comprising speed detecting means for detecting a speed of the vehicle, and a brake control unit that controls a brake of the vehicle to stop the vehicle when the speed detected by said speed detecting unit it equal to or less than a predetermined speed and said passage time calculating unit determines that the approaching object is expected to pass the front or rear of the vehicle within a third predetermined time shorter than the second predetermined time.