Object recognition device

An object recognition device that recognizes an object on the basis of a captured image, comprising:

• a function table acquiring unit configured to acquire a function table indicating a relationship between position information of the object and a probability of appearance of the object for a plurality of classes of the object for a plurality of image patterns indicating a portion of the object;
• a pattern appearance frequency calculating unit configured to calculate the frequency of appearance of each image pattern for the class of the object, using the function table acquired by the function table acquiring unit;
• a pattern selection unit configured to compare the captured image with the plurality of image patterns and to select an image pattern corresponding to the captured image;
• a class extracting unit configured to extract the class at which the frequency of appearance of the image pattern selected by the pattern selection unit is equal to or greater than a predetermined value;
• a voting unit configured to vote the position information of the image pattern selected by the pattern selection unit for the class extracted by the class extracting unit;
• and
• a recognition unit configured to recognize the object on the basis of a voting result for the class extracted by the extracting unit;
• wherein the class of the object indicates a kind of the object;
• wherein each of the function table acquiring unit, the pattern appearance frequency calculating unit, the pattern selection unit, the class extracting unit, the voting unit and the recognition unit are implemented via a CPU (central processing unit);
• wherein the pattern appearance frequency calculating unit calculates the commonality of a feature amount including the image pattern between the plurality of classes on the basis of the function table acquired by the function table acquiring unit, makes a tree diagram in which similar classes are clustered on the basis of the commonality of the feature amount and calculates a weight of each node in the tree diagram as the frequency of appearance of the image pattern for the class.