US Patent 9635346 Autonomous vehicle, and object recognizing method in autonomous vehicle

An autonomous vehicle includes a travel vehicle main body, a model data storage, a photographic device, a search region determiner, an image feature point detector, a feature amount calculator and a position detector. The travel vehicle main body autonomously travels to a target position. The model data storage stores model data related to a geometric feature of an object. The photographic device photographs a periphery of the travel vehicle main body at the target position to acquire image data. The search region determiner predicts a position of the object based on the image data, and determines a search region of a predetermined range including the predicted position of the object. The image feature point detector detects a feature point of the image data with respect to the search region. The feature amount calculator calculates a feature amount of a matching candidate point extracted from the feature point. The position detector matches the feature amount of the matching candidate point with the model data to recognize the position of the object based on the image data.