APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR DETECTING A VELOCITY OF A MOVING OBJECT

An apparatus for detecting a velocity of a moving object includes: a camera for photographing a predetermined area in which the object moves, at intervals of time T; a projector for projecting brightness information of each pixel in an image photographed at the intervals of time T by the camera, onto a longitudinal axis along a moving direction of the object, and for accumulating each brightness value on the longitudinal axis to generate pieces of one-dimensional projected information; a buffer for storing the pieces of one-dimensional projected information from the camera; and a detector for determining the velocity of the object moving in the predetermined area from the pieces of one-dimensional projected information stored in the buffer. Information to be processed becomes one-dimensional projected information, so even if there are a large number of pieces of one-dimensional projected information, they will be nearly the same as an amount of information of an image photographed at intervals of time T. Accordingly, information can be processed simply and a velocity can be detected accurately.