| 摘要 |
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 means 3 for 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 means 2 for obtaining a peripheral image having a view angle including the obstacle, subject-vehicle position specifying means 4 for sequentially specifying a present position of the vehicle which changes in association the traveling of the vehicle, first-plane setting means 5 for 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 means 6 for 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 means 7 for setting, as an image recognition area, an area included in the peripheral image and including the plane edge, image recognizing means 8 for image-recognizing a shape characteristics of the obstacle in the image recognition area from the peripheral image, and three-dimensional shape recognizing means 9 for recognizing the obstacle three-dimensionally, based on the first plane and result of the image recognition made by the image recognizing means 8.
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