Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd.

Morihiko Sakano

Shoji Muramatsu

Mirai Higuchi

Takeshi Shima

Tatsuhiko Monji

Takuya Naka

Soichiro Yokota

Ryo Ota

A stereo camera apparatus which carries out distance measuring stably and with high accuracy by making measuring distance resolution variable according to a distance to an object is provided. A stereo camera apparatustakes in two images, changes resolution of a partial area of each image that is taken in, and calculates a distance from a vehicle to an object that is imaged in the partial area, based on disparity of the partial area of each image in which resolution is changed. Thus, even when the object exists at a long distance and is small in size, distance measuring processing can be carried out stably.

Stereo camera apparatus

A road shape recognition device capable of accurately recognizing the road shape of a road that lies ahead in the travel direction of a vehicle is provided. A road shape recognition devicedetects a road region of the road based on an image capturing a scene ahead in the travel direction of the vehicle, and estimates the shape of the road based on that road region. Thus, it is possible to accurately recognize road shapes over distances ranging from short to long.

Road shape recognition device

A detection device of a planar area is provided. The detection device includes an image obtaining section for obtaining a left image and a right image; a planar area aligning section for setting given regions of interest to the obtained left image and the right image, and through use of a geometric transform function that matches the region of interest of the right image with the region of interest of the left image, performing geometric transform to generate a geometric transform image; and a planar area detecting section for detecting a planar area based on the geometric transform image and the region of interest of the right image. The planar area aligning section sets the planar area detected by the planar area detecting section as a given region of interest.

Detection device of planar area and stereo camera system

In order to perform vehicle control, a warning process, and the like which do not give a driver an uncomfortable feeling in speed adjustment, a warning process, and the like corresponding to a road shape such as a curve, it is necessary to recognize not only a near road shape but also a far road shape with high accuracy. A traveling environment recognition device includes: a measurement unit which measures a target object; a three-dimensional object detection unit which detects a three-dimensional object on the basis of a signal acquired by the measurement unit; a road shape prediction unit which predicts a road shape on which a target vehicle is traveling; a three-dimensional object selection unit which selects, from among the three-dimensional objects detected by the three-dimensional object detection unit, only a three-dimensional object within a predetermined range from a point of the road predicted by the road shape prediction unit; and a road shape estimation unit which estimates the road shape on the basis of position information of the three-dimensional object selected by the three-dimensional object selection unit.

Traveling environment recognition device

In stereo matching based on standard area matching, in order to suppress a decrease in matching accuracy, it is effective to adaptively change a matching area in accordance with the local properties of an image. However, this requires high calculation costs. Thus, the present invention provides a stereo image processing apparatus including an image pickup unitconfigured to take a plurality of image data using a plurality of cameras, an image memoryconfigured to store the plurality of image data taken by the image pickup unit, a calculated disparity storage unitconfigured to store disparity data determined based on the plurality of image data, a matching area control unitconfigured to set a matching area for each pixel based on the plurality of data read from the image memoryand the disparity data read from the calculated disparity storage unit, and a disparity calculating unitconfigured to perform matching on the image data based on the plurality of image data read from the image memoryand the matching area for each pixel set by the matching area control unitto calculate disparity data.

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Hitachinaka, Japan

Morihiko Sakano