Obstacle detection apparatus

Abstract

There is provided an obstacle detection apparatus for detecting an obstacle based on an image of periphery of a vehicle and a distance to an obstacle present in the vehicle's periphery. The apparatus includes distance determining meansfor determining, in association with traveling of the vehicle along a direction, a distance to the obstacle present in a direction perpendicular to the vehicle traveling direction, image inputting meansfor obtaining a peripheral image having a view angle including the obstacle, subject-vehicle position specifying meansfor sequentially specifying a present position of the vehicle which changes in association the traveling of the vehicle, first-plane setting meansfor setting, as a first plane, a face of the obstacle which extends perpendicular to the horizontal plane and extends, at the same time, along the traveling direction of the vehicle, plane-edge estimating meansfor estimating an edge of the first plane relative to the vehicle moving direction, based on the distance and the position of the vehicle, image recognition area setting meansfor setting, as an image recognition area, an area included in the peripheral image and including the plane edge, image recognizing meansfor image-recognizing a shape characteristics of the obstacle in the image recognition area from the peripheral image, and three-dimensional shape recognizing meansfor recognizing the obstacle three-dimensionally, based on the first plane and result of the image recognition made by the image recognizing means