Patent attributes
Provided is a pedestrian protection apparatus. An image capturer captures a far infrared (FIR) image of an object in front of a vehicle. A sensor is mounted on a bumper of the vehicle and senses at least one of a change in acceleration and a change in pressure of the bumper caused by a collision between the vehicle and an object located in front of the vehicle. A controller determines whether or not the object is a pedestrian candidate in accordance with the FIR image captured by the image capturer, determines whether or not the pedestrian candidate is a pedestrian in accordance with at least one of the change in the acceleration and the change in the pressure sensed by the sensor, and operates a protector for pedestrian protection in response to the pedestrian candidate being identified as the pedestrian.
