Image processing apparatus

Abstract

In an image processing apparatus carried on a vehicle, an image of a scene around the vehicle, which is photographed by an image pick-up, is inputted into a white line failure extractor. Then, outline points of a white line on a road and a guardrail, which is parallel to the white line, are sought. Further, the outline points are detected as a polynomial. Moreover, the image photographed by the image pick-up is also inputted into an intermittent image obtainer. Then, the images from the image pick-up are intermittently obtained at constant periodical intervals, and further the images are compressed using JPEG compression method. Further, in a synthesizer, the feature data from the white line feature extractor and the image data from the intermittent image obtainer are aligned in order of time. Moreover, the image data and feature data, which are aligned in order of time, are conserved within a given constant period by a recorder. Thus, accurate data as to condition of the road can be recorded using a small capacity memory.