US Patent 11787339 Trailer hitching assist system with trailer coupler detection

A trailer assist system for a vehicle includes a camera disposed at a rear portion of a vehicle and having a field of view exterior and at least rearward of the vehicle, the field of view encompassing at least a portion of a trailer coupler of a trailer stationary a distance from the vehicle. The camera captures image data that is representative of at least the trailer coupler of the trailer. An ECU includes an image processor operable to process image data captured by the camera. The ECU, responsive to image processing at the ECU of image data captured by the camera, determines a location of the trailer coupler using a detector model, which is based on an ensemble regression tree algorithm.