To detect an obstacle possibly causing a collision by a single camera.
This obstacle detector is provided with a photographing means 1 photographing the circumference, a tractable area detection means 2 detecting a tracking area for tracking movement of the obstacle, an area shift amount computing means 3 computing a shift amount of the tracking area in images captured in different times by the photographing means 1, an area similarity computing means 4 computing similarity of the tracking area for which the shift amount is computed, and an obstacle detection means 5 detecting the obstacle based on the area shift amount computed by the area shift amount computing means 3 and the area similarity computed by the area similarity computing means 4.
Hitoshi Maeda
Koichiro Okura
Miki Sato