The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 08, 2003
Filed:
Jan. 12, 1999
Atsushi Iisaka, Osaka, JP;
Nobuhiko Yasui, Osaka, JP;
Matsushita Electronic Industrial Co., Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
An image processing device for a vehicle according to the present invention has an edge extractor for emphasizing edges of a traffic lane in a front road image signal generated by a digital image pick-up device, a threshold setter for setting a threshold to extract the edges of the traffic lane based on the result detected by the edge extractor, an outline extractor for extracting an outline of the traffic lane to generate an outline data based on the result detected by the edge extractor and the threshold set by the threshold setter, a noise eliminator for eliminating noise components from the outline data, a white line detector for detecting lane-indicating lines based on the outline data from which the noise components have been eliminated, an attitude change detector for estimating the attitude of the vehicle based on the detected lane-indicating lines, and a target advance direction detector for detecting a target direction to advance the vehicle based on the result obtained by the white line detector and the estimated attitude of the vehicle. According to the image processing apparatus, the target direction to advance the vehicle can be exactly measured, even if the helix angle (i.e. pitch angle) changes.