Object recognition apparatus, object recognition method, and non-transitory computer readable medium

An object recognition method comprising:

• causing a light source to emit first light toward a scene and subsequently emit second light toward the scene, the first light having a first spatial distribution, the second light having a second spatial distribution;
• determining emission timings of the first light and the second light and an exposure timing of a photodetector device such that at least a portion of a plurality of photodetector elements of the photodetector device detects only a part of, but not all of first reflected light and only a part of, but not all of second reflected light in a same exposure period, the first reflected light being caused by reflection of the first light from the scene, the second reflected light being caused by reflection of the second light from the scene;
• causing the at least the portion of the plurality of photodetector elements of the photodetector device to detect only the part of, but not all of the first reflected light and only the part of, but not all of the second reflected light in the same exposure period;
• recognizing an object included in the scene based on photodetection data and an object recognition model, the photodetection data being output from the photodetector device, the object recognition model being pre-trained by a machine learning algorithm;
• deriving a distance to the object based on the photodetection data;
• and
• outputting information representing the object, and range information representing the distance.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having a program stored thereon, the program causing a computer to execute:

• causing a light source to emit first light toward a scene and subsequently emit second light toward the scene, the first light having a first spatial distribution, the second light having a second spatial distribution;
• determining emission timings of the first light and the second light and an exposure timing of a photodetector device such that at least a portion of a plurality of photodetector elements of the photodetector device detects only a part of, but not all of first reflected light and only a part of, but not all of second reflected light in a same exposure period, the first reflected light being caused by reflection of the first light from the scene, the second reflected light being caused by reflection of the second light from the scene;
• causing the at least the portion of the plurality of photodetector elements of the photodetector device to detect only the part of, but not all of the first reflected light and only the part of, but not all of the second reflected light in the same exposure period;
• recognizing an object included in the scene based on photodetection data and an object recognition model, the photodetection data being output from the photodetector device, the object recognition model being pre-trained by a machine learning algorithm;
• deriving a distance to the object based on the photodetection data;
• and
• outputting information representing the object, and range information representing the distance.