DISTANCE IMAGE CALCULATING DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To calculate the distribution of the distance upto a body more closely. SOLUTION: This is a correlative operation unit which uses stereographic matching. Images of a body are picked up by a couple of image pickup devices 10 and 11. A measurement point is set in one piece of image data and correlative operation by a city block distance is carried out with the other image in an (x) direction to obtain a correlation curve. A parallax candidate setting part 16 sets a parallax candidate to minimum values of the correlation curve. A matching degree evaluation part 17 decides the reliability of the parallax candidate from the minimum values and the vertical angles of minimum parts. The candidate is regarded as a high-reliability measurement point when the reliability is larger than a specific level or as a low-reliability measurement point when smaller. A parallax correction part 18 selects the parallax which is closest to parallax candidates of the low-reliability measurement point out of those candidates when the low-reliability measurement succeeds to the high- reliability measurement point in two directions. Consequently, the number of high-reliability measurement points constituting the body increases and the distribution of the distance from the body is closely found from the parallax.