DISTANCE MEASURING APPARATUS

Japanese Patent JP3830174

B2

PURPOSE: To reduce time for calculating a distance using luminance information obtained from an image pickup means. CONSTITUTION: A pair of image pickup means 111 and 112 is arranged to calculate a parallax of a plane or two images of a two-dimensional surface allowed to approximate to the plane from the theory of stereoscopic vision. The parallax of the plane which grows large downward from the horizontal line of the images with a distance measuring device 115 for detecting a distance from the subject based on the parallax. A shift value decision means 120 is provided to determine an area within the degree of allowance of the parallax and a shifting value changing means 121 to increase a shifting value of two screens as the parallax increases. The correlation of luminance values of two images is calculated using a correlation function based on a shifting value decided and a change shifting value to determine the parallax.