TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an external environment recognition apparatus.

BACKGROUND ART

In recent years, the development of a technology for monitoring surrounding circumferences of a driver's own vehicle by an in-vehicle camera and, when sensing a danger, issuing a warning to the driver and automatically controlling behaviors of the own vehicle for avoiding an accident such as a collision between vehicles and a collision between the vehicle and a person is underway. For such preventive safety and automatic driving control for the own vehicle, it is necessary to always continue to monitor approaching of a vehicle present around the own vehicle as an observation object. With the technology of this type, not only the vehicle as the observation object but also various objects such as surrounding structures in the background appear in images captured by the in-vehicle camera. Owing to this, it is difficult to accurately identify and sense the observation object, resulting in the occurrence of false sensing.

As a technique for resolving the false sensing resulting from the background in the image, it is proposed to recognize a road surface region in which a vehicle can drive and execute vehicle sensing on the road surface region. In respect to this technique, Patent Document 1, for example, discloses a method of determining whether a vehicle can drive in a region by creating a gray-scale map from a disparity image captured with a stereo camera and identifying a road surface in images using this gray-scale map.

PRIOR ART DOCUMENT

Patent Document

Patent Document 1: JP-2014-67407-A

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Problems to be Solved by the Invention

The gray-scale map described in Patent Document 1 is typically narrow in a dynamic range for information that can be expressed and is susceptible to the influence of surrounding brightness. It is, therefore, often difficult to accurately identify a road surface in the images with the technique of Patent Document 1, and in such a case, it is difficult to accurately sense an object such as the other vehicle present around the own vehicle from the captured images.

Means for Solving the Problems

An image processing apparatus according to a first aspect of the present invention includes: an object detection section that performs convolution computation on an input image based on a captured image obtained by capturing the image with a camera and that detects an object; a feature map validation section that performs feature map validation validating a likelihood that the input image contains the object on a basis of a feature map obtained by the convolution computation; a time series validation section that performs time series validation validating in time series a result of the feature map validation performed by the feature map validation section; and a detection result correction section that corrects a detection result about the object, the detection result being output by the object detection section, on a basis of a result of the time series validation performed by the time series validation section.

An external environment recognition apparatus according to a second aspect of the present invention includes the image processing apparatus, and outputs at least one of a warning signal for warning a driver of the own vehicle and a vehicle control signal for controlling an operation of the own vehicle, on a basis of a corrected sensing result about the other vehicle, the corrected sensing result being corrected by the detection result correction section.

Advantage of the Invention

According to the present invention, it is possible to accurately sense an object such as the other vehicle present around the own vehicle from the captured image.

