Apparatus, program and method for detecting both stationary objects and moving objects in an image

摘要

An object detection apparatus (10)is provided for detecting both stationary objects and moving objects accurately from an image captured from a moving mobile unit. The object detection apparatus (10) of the present invention applies Gabor filter to two or more input images captured by an imaging device (12) such as CCD camera mounted on a mobile unit, and calculates (2, 3, 4) optical flow of local areas in the input images. Then the object detection apparatus closely removes optical flow produced by motion of the mobile unit by estimating optical flow produced from background of the input images. In other words, the object detection apparatus clarifies the area where object is not present ("ground") in the input images. By removing such "ground" part, the area where objects seems to be present ("feature") is extracted from the input images. Finally, the object detection apparatus (10) determines (7) whether objects are present or not using flow information of the extracted "feature" part.