Vehicle periphery monitoring apparatus

Abstract

Provided is a device for monitoring the surrounding area of a vehicle. The device separates and extracts an object around the vehicle in better precision from the background. The device detects the ambient temperature of the vehicle, and determines a temperature difference between the ambient temperature and an object surface temperature estimated on the basis of the ambient temperature. On the basis of the brightness value of the background of a captured image obtained by an infrared camera and a brightness difference corresponding to the temperature difference, the brightness value of the object is calculated. The captured image is binarized by using the brightness value of the object as a threshold value, and the object is extracted. Since the binary threshold value is set on the basis of the relation between the ambient temperature and the object surface temperature, the object can be separated and extracted in the better precision from the background.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.