Adaptive cruise control device

An adaptive cruise control device, comprising:

• an object measurement unit configured to detect objects located ahead of an own vehicle, assign an identification (ID) to each of the detected objects, and measure a direction and a distance to each of the detected objects;
• a user interface configured to accept an input to designate a preceding vehicle to be followed from the objects detected by the object measurement unit;
• an image capturing unit configured to capture an image of each of at least some of the objects detected by the object measurement unit:
• a license plate recognition unit configured to extract a license plate area from each image captured by the image capturing unit, and recognize alphanumeric characters from each license plate area by using an image recognition technique;
• a storage unit configured to store information on the designated preceding vehicle, the information including the ID and alphanumeric characters of a license plate of the designated preceding vehicle;
• an alphanumeric character matching unit configured to compare the alphanumeric characters recognized from the image of the license plate area captured by the image capturing unit with the alphanumeric characters stored in the storage unit;
• a preceding vehicle determination unit configured to determine the designated preceding vehicle from an output from the object measurement unit, and correct or authenticate the determined preceding vehicle according an output from the alphanumeric character matching unit;
• and
• a drive control unit configured to control driving of the own vehicle so as to follow the determined preceding vehicle.