Method for monitoring blind spot of monitoring vehicle and blind spot monitor using the same

A method of monitoring a blind spot of a monitoring vehicle by using a blind spot monitor, comprising steps of:

• (a) the blind spot monitor, if rear video images for testing are acquired from the monitoring vehicle in operation, acquiring or supporting another device to acquire at least one feature map for testing from the rear video images for testing, on condition that the blind spot monitor completes or supports another device to complete (i) a process of acquiring rear video images for sampling with regard to one or more reference vehicles located per distance from the monitoring vehicle and located in the blind spot of the monitoring vehicle, (ii) a process of creating reference boxes corresponding to the reference vehicles in each of the rear video images for sampling, and (iii) a process of setting the reference boxes as m proposal boxes which serve as candidate regions in the blind spot of the monitoring vehicle, wherein the candidate regions have probabilities of detecting at least one monitored vehicle;
• (b) the blind spot monitor (i) acquiring or supporting another device to acquire each of feature vectors for testing corresponding to each of the m proposal boxes by applying pooling operation to the m proposal boxes on the feature map for testing, (ii) inputting or supporting another device to input the feature vectors for testing into at least one fully connected layer, (iii) acquiring or supporting another device to acquire classification scores for testing for each class, corresponding to each of the m proposal boxes, and (iv) acquiring or supporting another device to acquire regression information for testing for each class, corresponding to each of the m proposal boxes;
• and
• (c) the blind spot monitor performing or supporting another device to perform (i) a process of selecting j proposal boxes among the m proposal boxes by referring to the classification scores for testing, (ii) a process of acquiring each of bounding boxes corresponding to each of the j proposal boxes by using the regression information for testing corresponding to each of the j proposal boxes, (iii) a process of confirming whether each of the bounding boxes matches its corresponding proposal box among the j proposal boxes to a degree equal to or greater than a first threshold, and (iv) a process of determining whether the monitored vehicle is located in any of the j proposal boxes, to thereby determine whether the monitored vehicle is located in the blind spot of the monitoring vehicle.