Light distribution controller, vehicular lamp system, and light distribution control method

A light distribution control method of controlling a light distribution variable lamp capable of illuminating a region ahead of a vehicle with a visible light beam of a variable intensity distribution, based on an image obtained repeatedly from an imager that captures an image of the region ahead of the vehicle, the light distribution control method comprising:

• extracting an index value from a predetermined region to be processed within the image;
• determining a light distribution pattern such that the index value approaches a maximum value;
• and
• controlling the light distribution variable lamp so as to form the light distribution pattern,
• the index value being at least one of a mean intensity of histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) feature values of a plurality of pixels of the region to be processed or an edge gray level proportion indicating, in a local binary pattern (LBP) histogram of the plurality of pixels, a proportion of the number of pixels belonging to a gray level of an edge portion to a total number of the plurality of pixels.

A light distribution controller that controls a light distribution variable lamp capable of illuminating a region ahead of a vehicle with a visible light beam of a variable intensity distribution, based on an image obtained from an imager that captures an image of the region ahead of the vehicle, the light distribution controller comprising:

• a computation unit that extracts a local binary pattern (LBP) histogram of a predetermined region to be processed within the image and calculates a degree of similarity between the extracted LBP histogram and a template LBP histogram prepared beforehand;
• a pattern determiner that determines a light distribution pattern such that the degree of similarity approaches a maximum value;
• and
• a lamp controller that controls the light distribution variable lamp so as to form the light distribution pattern.