ROAD-SHOULDER DETECTING DEVICE AND VEHICLE USING THE SAME

• Main Authors: NAKATAKU HISAYA, MURAMATSU SHOJI, SHIMA TAKESHI, MOJI TATSUHIKO, HIGUCHI MIKI
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 14.07.2011
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; CONJOINT CONTROL OF VEHICLE SUB-UNITS OF DIFFERENT TYPE ORDIFFERENT FUNCTION; CONTROL SYSTEMS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR HYBRID VEHICLES; COUNTING; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECOGNITION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; ROAD VEHICLE DRIVE CONTROL SYSTEMS FOR PURPOSES NOT RELATED TOTHE CONTROL OF A PARTICULAR SUB-UNIT; SIGNALLING; TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS; TRANSPORTING; VEHICLES IN GENERAL

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a road shoulder detecting device for detecting a road shoulder from image information even though a white line and a three-dimensional object such as a guardrail do not exist on the road shoulder which is a boundary between a road surface and an outside of the road. SOLUTION: The road shoulder detecting device includes a distance information calculating unit for calculating existence of an object and a distance between a self-vehicle and the object from input three-dimensional image information of an environment outside the vehicle, a road surface detecting unit for detecting the road surface on which the self-vehicle cruises from a distance image based on the calculated distance, a height difference calculating unit for measuring height difference between the detected road surface and the outside of the road, and a road shoulder determining unit for determining whether the road shoulder which is the boundary between the road surface and the outside of the road is the road shoulder in the case when there is the outside of the road, which is lower than the road surface, based on the measured height difference. COPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&INPIT