Image recognizing device and image recognizing method

An image recognizing device, comprising:

• a surroundings state acquiring portion configured to acquire a state of surroundings that changes accompanying movement of a vehicle on which a camera is mounted through time-series camera image information;
• a vertical edge extracting portion configured to extract, as a vertical edge, a part where there is a change in pixel brightness of no less than a prescribed value when the camera image information is scanned in the horizontal direction;
• a column candidate extracting portion configured to extract, as a column candidate, a pair of edges found when the vertical edges are searched for pairs of a plus edge peak and a minus edge peak;
• a pole candidate evaluating portion configured to evaluate whether or not a column candidate satisfies a pole evaluation condition and evaluate a column candidate that satisfies the pole evaluation condition as a pole candidate extending from the ground;
• a pole foot position setting portion configured to set a bottommost end position of a vertical edge image wherein a pole candidate appears as a pole foot position;
• a movement distance acquiring portion configured to acquire a movement distance moved by the vehicle during a prescribed time when the vehicle is moving toward the pole candidate;
• a detected distance difference calculating portion configured to calculate a detected distance difference between a starting detected distance and an ending detected distance for the prescribed time by detecting the horizontal distance from the camera position to the pole foot position when the vehicle is moving toward the pole candidate;
• a pole identifying portion configured to identify, the edge position of the bottommost end of the pole candidate where the absolute value of a difference between the movement distance and the detected distance difference is less than a threshold value, as the pole foot position of the pole;
• and
• an automatic brake controller for automatically actuating a brake of the vehicle, prior to the vehicle colliding with an obstacle, based on approach distance information for the obstacle, when the vehicle approaches the obstacle, wherein:
• the pole identifying portion outputs, to the automatic brake controller, a pole identification result of whether or not there is a pole that has a pole foot position that is a position that is in contact with the ground.