Object recognition device and object recognition method

An object recognition method comprising:

• an imaging step of capturing images of a predetermined monitoring area to acquire a three-dimensional image and a two-dimensional image;
• an object extraction step of extracting, in the three dimensional image whose pixels respectively have their height information, an area having pixels whose pixel values are within a predetermined height range and that determines a search area in the two-dimensional image so as to correspond to the extracted area based on positional-relation-correspondence information;
• an image searching step of searching the two-dimensional image, acquired by the imaging step, for a reference image registered in advance according to a type of an object;
• and
• a determination step of determining the type of the object depending on whether or not the reference image searched for by the image searching step exists in the search area determined in the two dimensional image;
• and
• a control step of controlling a robot based on the determination process.

An object recognition device comprising:

• an imaging unit that captures images of a predetermined monitoring area to acquire a three-dimensional image and a two-dimensional image;
• and
• a controller which has positional-relation-correspondence information between pixels of the three dimensional image and pixels of the two dimensional image, wherein the controller is configured to conduct:
• an object extraction process that binarizes and extracts, in the three dimensional image whose pixels respectively have their height information, an area having pixels whose pixel values are within a predetermined height range, and that determines a search area in the two-dimensional image so as to correspond to the extracted area based on the positional-relation-correspondence information;
• an image searching process that searches the two-dimensional image, acquired by the imaging unit, for a reference image registered in advance according to a type of an object;
• and
• a determination process that determines the type of the object depending on whether or not the reference image searched for in the image searching process exists in the search area determined in the two dimensional image;
• and
• a control unit that controls a robot based on the determination process.