Driving assistance apparatus and driving assistance method

A driving assistance apparatus, comprising:

• an input configured to be coupled with a camera mounted on a vehicle;
• and
• an inclination detector that detects an inclination direction of a slope or a road surface around the vehicle based on a camera image of surroundings of the vehicle taken by the camera mounted on the vehicle, wherein
• the inclination detector includes:
• an overhead image generator that generates an overhead image from the camera image while using a contact plane of the vehicle as a projection plane;
• a feature point detector that detects one or more feature points from the overhead image;
• a movement amount calculator that calculates motion parallax of the one or more feature points caused by movement of the vehicle;
• a coordinate calculator that calculates three-dimensional coordinates of the one or more feature points from the motion parallax;
• an inclination direction estimator that estimates the inclination direction of the slope or the road surface that has an inclination different from the contact plane of the vehicle, based on a distribution of the three-dimensional coordinates of the one or more feature points;
• and
• an inclination angle estimator that finds an inclination angle based on the inclination direction and the distribution, and
• driving of the vehicle is assisted based on the inclination direction.