METHOD FOR ELIMINATING ERRONEOUS DETECTION DUE TO SMEAR IN OBJECT DETECTOR

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To eliminate erroneous detection due to a smear with high accuracy even in the case of employing an inexpensive solid-state image pickup device by using 3-dimensional information so as to detect a smear production point and eliminate erroneously detected smear in the object detector adopting the stereoscopic image range finding method. SOLUTION: An image picked up by solid-state image pickup devices 9, 12 is divided into plural rectangular areas in the horizontal and vertical directions and a range finding measurement section 17 calculates the distance of each rectangular area. Then the property that the distance of each rectangular area from a camera in the optical axis direction is equal at a horizontal position where a smear takes place is utilized to allow a smear detection section 23 to detect the smear production position from the distribution of the distance of each rectangular area. Then an object detection section 25 estimates the ground height of an object in actually existence at the smear production position based on the distribution of the existence in the rectangular areas around the smear production position so as not to detect the area where the object is not in existence thereby realizing erroneously detected smear with high accuracy.