Vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus

Abstract

A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus which determines whether there is a possibility of contact between a vehicle and a monitored object around the vehicle with a single camera mounted thereon. It includes a monitored object extraction process unit () which extracts an image portion of the monitored object from an image taken by a single infrared camera (), a rate-of-change calculation process unit () which calculates a rate of change in size of the image portion of an identical monitored object extracted by the monitored object extraction process unit () from a plurality of images taken by the infrared camera () at predetermined time intervals, an arrival time estimation process unit () which estimates the time to arrival of the monitored object at the vehicle based on the rate of change, a real space position calculation process unit () which calculates a position of the monitored object in the real space based on the rate of change, a movement vector calculation process unit () which calculates a movement vector from a displacement of the position of the monitored object in the real space, and a contact determination process unit () which determines whether there is a possibility of contact between the monitored object and the vehicle.