DISTANCE ESTIMATION APPARATUS AND METHOD

A distance to an object is estimated with a monocular camera that estimates a distance from a moving object to feature points on an image from an imaging device mounted on the moving object. The distance estimator sets one or more feature points on the image acquired from the imaging device at a first timing and detects the feature point on the image acquired from the imaging device at a second timing. The distance estimator also determines the movement amount of the feature point on the image between the first timing and the second timing and determines the movement amount of the moving object between the first and second timings. The distance estimator then estimates the distance from the moving object to the feature point based on the movement amount on the image and the movement amount of the moving object between the first and second timings.