Vehicle-Width Vanishing Point Correction for In-Vehicle Images

Solution Overview

Problem

Existing techniques for calculating vanishing points from vehicle-mounted camera images require significant calculation costs and battery consumption to achieve high accuracy.

Innovation Solution

An image processing device and method that detects another vehicle in the image and corrects the vanishing point based on a comparison between the actual and estimated widths of the vehicle, using a hardware processor and software to adjust the vanishing point's horizontal position.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If block matching method or gradient method is used to calculate motion vectors for each pixel, then vanishing point accuracy is improved, but calculation cost and battery consumption increase significantly

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvevanishing point accuracyVSAvoidbattery consumption

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the necessary information (vehicle width) from the image rather than performing full pixel-level motion vector calculations. By focusing on specific semantic features (vehicle detection and width measurement) instead of processing all pixels, the method achieves vanishing point calculation with significantly reduced computational load and battery consumption while maintaining accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

2Measurement precision

If block matching method or gradient method is used to calculate motion vectors for each pixel, then vanishing point accuracy is improved, but calculation cost increases significantly

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvevanishing point accuracyVSAvoidcalculation cost

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the necessary information (vehicle width) from the image rather than performing full pixel-level motion vector calculations. By focusing on specific semantic features (vehicle detection and width measurement) instead of processing all pixels, the method achieves vanishing point calculation with significantly reduced computational load and battery consumption while maintaining accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

3Device complexity

If vehicle width comparison method is used to correct vanishing point, then calculation cost is reduced, but requires accurate vehicle detection and width estimation

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecalculation costVSAvoidvehicle width detection accuracy

Core Design Contradiction:

Device complexityVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces vehicle width as an intermediary parameter to indirectly determine the vanishing point. Instead of directly calculating motion vectors for all pixels, the method uses vehicle detection and width measurement as intermediate steps that provide sufficient information for vanishing point correction with much lower computational complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentEP4730256A1Image processing device, image processing method, and program

Publication Date: 2026.04.22 HONDA MOTOR CO LTD

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AI summary

Provided is an image processing device including: a detection unit that detects another vehicle present in an image captured by an image sensor mounted in a host vehicle; and a correction unit that corrects a vanishing point of the image, wherein the correction unit corrects the vanishing point on the basis of a result of comparison between a first width of the detected other vehicle and a second width of the other vehicle estimated using the vanishing point.