Patent Document ID: 7522747
Application ID: 11050043
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A vehicle detection apparatus for using a camera image from a camera for monitoring the front of one's own vehicle and detection data from a radar for detecting position of an object in front of said own vehicle and distance to said object from said own vehicle to recognize a front-going vehicle among photographed objects; said vehicle detection apparatus comprising: a memory; registering means for preliminarily registering in said memory reference images each with a size corresponding to the distance to said object, each of said reference images having a horizontally elongated part with downward protrusions that protrude only downward from both end parts of said horizontally elongated part and having no upward protrusions that protrude upward from said horizontally elongated part; image extracting means for extracting images in a specified area inside said camera image centered around positions of objects in the detection data from said radar; binarization means for binarizing the extracted images by said image extracting means; matching means for matching patterns between an image figure contained in the binarized image and said reference images to look up one of said reference images with a size matching a detected distance; and judging means for judging an image figure as a figure of a front-going vehicle if said matching means concludes that said image figure matches one of said reference images over a specified percentage.