VEHICULAR MONITORING CAMERA DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a vehicular monitoring camera device capable of adequately displaying an image of the forward side of a vehicle. SOLUTION: The presence/absence of a traffic signal in front, a distance to the traffic signal and the lighting state thereof are determined from an image in front of a vehicle 100 picked up by a forward monitoring camera 12. A distance to the closest crossing point in front of the vehicle 100 is calculated based on information on the position of a one's own vehicle and a crossing point obtained from a navigation device 15, and is compared with a distance to the traffic signal obtained from the image picked up by the forward monitoring camera 12 to determine the presence/absence of the traffic signal at the closest crossing point in front of the vehicle 100. By switching on/off the side monitoring camera 11 and changing the display/non-display of the image of the side monitoring camera 11 based on the determination, the on/off-operation of the side monitoring camera 11 and the display/non-display of the image of the side monitoring camera 11 can be adequately changed even if there is generated a difference between road map information stored in a storage medium of the car navigation device 15 and an actual road situation. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT