WATER DROPLET DETECTION DEVICE AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL OBJECT DETECTION DEVICE USING WATER DROPLET DETECTION DEVICE

The present invention is provided with: an image capturing means (10) having an photographic optical system (11) and adapted for capturing an image of a predetermined area, an image conversion means (31) for viewpoint-converting an image obtained by the image capturing means to create a bird's-eye-view image; a water droplet detection means (40) for setting an arbitrary attention point in the image, a plurality of first reference points inside an imaginary circle of a predetermined radius having the attention point as the center thereof, and a plurality of second reference points corresponding to the first reference points outside the imaginary circle, detecting edge information between the first reference points and second reference points, and assessing the circularity strength of these edge information, thereby detecting water droplets attached to the photographic optical system; a first three-dimensional object detection means (33) for generating differential waveform information from the differential image of the bird's-eye-view images at different points in time obtained by the image conversion means and detecting a three-dimensional object based on the differential waveform information; a three-dimensional object assessment means (38) for assessing whether the three-dimensional object that has been detected by the first three-dimensional object detection means is another vehicle; a water droplet removal device (41) for removing water droplets attached to the photographic optical system; and a control unit (39) for operating the water droplet removal means in accordance with the water droplet attachment state detected by the water droplet detection means.