Sumitomo Electric Industries, Limited

Hiroshi Shimoura

Kenji Tenmoku

An object recognition apparatus that can recognize an object in an image acquired by an on-vehicle camera mounted on a vehicle with high efficiency and accuracy. A recognition processing is carried out in a cut off range, which is cut off from the image, and in which an object to be recognized is supposed to be present. The cut off range is obtained using support information supplied from a position detection device and/or an anti-lock brake device of the vehicle. Since the object in the image changes its position as the vehicle moves, the displacement must be estimated during the object recognition. The estimation requires camera attitude parameters of the on-vehicle camera with respect to the road, and the estimation is performed using support information supplied from the position detection device and/of the anti-lock brake device. This will improve the efficiency and accuracy of obtaining the camera attitude parameters.

Object recognition apparatus and method

Herein disclosed is an apparatus mounted on a vehicle for assisting a vehicle driver in carefully driving. The apparatus comprises data obtaining means for obtaining vehicle movement data indicative of a movement of the vehicle, estimating means for estimating a current location of the vehicle on the basis of the vehicle movement data obtained by the data obtaining means, information providing means for providing the vehicle driver with guide information as to the current location of the vehicle estimated by the estimating means, and judging means for judging whether travel of the vehicle is anomalous or not, on the basis of the vehicle movement data obtained by the obtaining means. The information providing means is operated to provide the vehicle driver with attention information that the travel of the vehicle is anomalous when the judging means judges that the travel of the vehicle is anomalous. The apparatus thus constructed serves not only as navigation apparatus but also as a anomalous travel preventing apparatus.

Apparatus for assisting driver in carefully driving

A method of and an apparatus for producing an animation having a series of road drawings to be watched from a driver's seat of a vehicle during a travel between two predetermined positions in a road map. The road drawings are formed on the basis of road data indicative of roads and obtained through three-dimensional computer graphics. Road map data indicative of the road map are stored in a road map data base device and includes node data indicative of nodes formed by intersections, corners and ends of the roads, link data indicative of links each connecting two of the nodes to define a road segment and road width data indicative of the widths of the road segments. The road map data covering a travel route between the predetermined positions are selected by a calculator from the road map data base device. The road data are calculated by the calculator on the basis of the selected road map data to produce the animation in such a manner that the roads are three-dimensionally shown in the road drawings.

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Osaka, Japan

Hiroshi Shimoura