VEHICLE IMAGING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem that a conventional vehicle imaging apparatus adjusts aperture and shutter speed of camera depending on average brightness of an image and luminance information of a road surface when a license number cannot be detected, so that when a scene in a field-of-view of camera changes with no change of brightness, camera control fails and only an extremely bright or dark license number image can be obtained, thereby detecting no license number. SOLUTION: The vehicle imaging apparatus includes a license number detecting means for detecting a license number from an input image captured by a camera, a license number luminance extracting means for extracting luminance data from an image region of the detected license number, a vehicle luminance extracting means for extracting luminance data from an image region of the vehicle detected from the input image with a vehicle detecting means, and a camera controlling means for controlling imaging conditions of the camera using both luminance data extracted by the license number luminance extracting means and luminance data extracted by the vehicle luminance extracting means. COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT