Object detecting apparatus in which the position of a planar object is estimated by using Hough transform

摘要

Based on left and right images that have been taken by image pickup devices, a correlation processing section obtains parallax data as three-dimensional data of objects. At processing start time, a plane estimating section estimates the position of a planar object such as a road or a floor by utilizing the Hough transform based on the parallax data that have been obtained successfully for part of rectangular segments of the images, and interpolates the parallax data by using the position of the planar object. At a time point after the processing start time, a parallax variation detecting section detects an object by comparing current parallax data with the parallax data at the processing start time.