CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

The present application is a national stage application of PCT Application No. PCT/JP2017/037064, filed on Oct. 12, 2017, which claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2016-205051 filed Oct. 19, 2016, the description of which is incorporated herein by reference. Also, any applications for which a foreign or domestic priority claim is identified in the Application Data Sheet as filed with the present application are hereby incorporated by reference under 37 CFR 1.57.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a vehicle control apparatus and a vehicle control method which are for detecting an object by using a combination of an electromagnetic wave sensor and an image sensor.

BACKGROUND ART

Conventionally, there has been known a vehicle control apparatus which uses both an electromagnetic wave sensor and an image sensor and is designed for detecting objects which are present in front of a vehicle provided with the apparatus.

Practically, the electromagnetic wave sensor detects positions of objects and the image sensor acquires an image to detect positions of objects. These positions are used in a determination condition to determine whether or not objects sensed by the respective sensors represent the same.

In PTL 1, there is disclosed an apparatus in which a mutual proximity of positions of objects respectively detected by the electromagnetic wave sensor and the acquired image, is set as a determination condition to determine whether or not the detected objects represent the same object.

Further, in the apparatus disclosed in PTL 1, in addition to the above-described determination condition, there is another determination condition to determine whether or not objects represent the same object. This determination condition is based on a difference between two periods of time and a predetermined threshold. One period of time is estimated as being required for the vehicle, which is calculated based on a current position of an object detected by the electromagnetic wave sensor, will collide with an object. The other period of time is estimated as being required for the vehicle, which is calculated based on current position detected from acquired images, will collide with an object. If a difference between both periods of time is equal to or less than the threshold, it is determined that both objects represent the same object.

CITATION LIST

Patent Literature

[Patent Literature]

JP 2016-66182 A

SUMMARY

Incidentally, when calculating the position of an object using the acquired images, a known pattern matching process can be used for recognizing an object, for example.

Since the pattern matching process can recognize an object even when the whole image of an object is not included in the acquired images, the object may be recognized only when a part of the object is outside the images.

As a result, an object recognized in the state of being partially excluded from the acquired images tends to deviate when being compared to the object with its whole image being recognized in the acquired images. This causes a deviation in the calculated position in the images.

Due to this deviation, two objects which are highly likely to represent the same object may be erroneously determined as different objects in the determination process for determining whether or not they represent the same object.

The present disclosure has been made in view of the above described problems, and a purpose thereof is to provide a vehicle control apparatus and a vehicle control method, which are for detecting an object by using both an electromagnetic wave sensor and an image sensor, and which is possible to minimize a decrease in determination accuracy as to whether or not the detected objects represent the same object.

The present disclosure relates to a vehicle control apparatus including an object determination unit that determines whether or not objects represent a same object based on a first position at which an object which exists in a field in front of a own vehicle is detected by an electromagnetic wave sensor and a second position of an object detected from an image of a forward view of the own vehicle, the image being acquired by an image sensor.

The vehicle control apparatus further includes: an image determination unit that determines whether or not a part of the object is excluded from the acquired image, in which the object has been detected from the acquired image but a part of the object is outside an imaging region of the image sensor; and a determination condition change unit that changes a determination condition used for determining whether or not the objects represent the same object such that an object determined to be excluded from the acquired image is easier to be determined as the same object compared to an object determined not to be excluded from the acquired image.

An object of which a part is located outside the imaging region of the image sensor may have a second position detected from the acquired image differently from a true position thereof.

In this regard, according to the above-described configuration of the present disclosure, it is determined whether or not a part of the object detected from the acquired image is included in the acquired image. That is, it is checked whether a part of the object is outside the imaging region of the image sensor.

The determination condition is changed such that an object which is determined to be partially excluded from the acquired image can be more easily determined as the same object as an object obtained by the electromagnetic wave sensor, compared to a case where an object is determined not to be partially excluded from the acquired image.

In this case, even when an error occurs in the second position because a part of the object is positioned outside the imaging region, it is possible to minimize cases where the object from the acquired image is determined as a different object, and to minimize deterioration of the determination accuracy as to whether or not the objects represent the same object.

