Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Ryosuke Iida

Kazufumi Mizusawa

Michio Miwa

Shusaku Okamoto

Takashi Yoshida

Yuichi Hirama

Tsuyoshi Okada

Katsumasa Onda

Masato Nishizawa

There is disclosed a picture synthesizing apparatus for superimposing an auxiliary image upon an image converted as if the image were photographed with a virtual viewpoint, displaying the image in a monitor, and providing the image such that an approach to a surrounding solid object can easily be predicted from the monitor image. The picture synthesizing apparatus includes: an image pickup unitdisposed in a car; a viewpoint change image synthesizing unitfor changing a viewpoint of the image obtained by the image pickup unitand synthesizing the image; a car straight locus line generation unitfor generating a locus line at an arbitrary height of the car, when the car linearly advances; and a car locus line drawing unitfor drawing the locus line generated by the car straight locus line generation uniton the image synthesized by the viewpoint change image synthesizing unit

Picture synthesizing apparatus

A picture composing apparatus designed to combine a plurality of images taken by a plurality of image pickup devices. In the apparatus, a first projecting unit projects the plurality of images taken by the image pickup devices onto a projection section in accordance with an image pickup situation of the image pickup devices to generate a plurality of first projected images, and a second projecting unit projects the plurality of first projected images to a three-dimensional projection model to generate a second projected image. Also included in the apparatus are a virtual image pickup device for virtually picking up the second projected image and an image pickup situation determining unit for determining an image pickup situation of the virtual image pickup device, whereby the second projected image is picked up by the virtual image pickup device in the image pickup situation determined by the pickup situation determining unit to combine the plurality of images taken by the plurality of image pickup devices, thus producing a high-quality composite picture. This apparatus can offer a natural composite picture in which joints among the images taken by the image pickup devices do not stand out. In addition, when mounted on a motor vehicle, this apparatus allows a driver to easily seize the surrounding situations and the positional relationship of the motor vehicle with respect to other objects.

Picture composing apparatus and method

Parking assistance apparatus that displays on a screen an image shot by image picking-up apparatus mounted on a vehicle. The parking assistance apparatus superimposes a guide line that is parallel to the line tangent to the predicted outer locus of the vehicle assumed when the vehicle is backed with the wheel at the maximum steering angle. This allows the driver to drive the vehicle so that the guide line will not overlap the image of another vehicle thus allowing parking that avoids any contact.

Parking assistance apparatus

A driving aiding system includes a displaying section arranged at a position that can be looked at from a driver's seat of a vehicle, an image picking-up section for picking up an image of a rear portion of the vehicle containing at least a part of a hitch that is provided to the rear portion of the vehicle, and an image processing section for causing the displaying section to display a synthesized image that is obtained by image-processing an image picked up by the image picking-up section. A hitch image of own vehicle in addition to an image of a trailed vehicle and an image of a destination coupler are displayed on a screen of the displaying section. As a result, the relative positional relationship between the hitch and the destination coupler can be checked on the screen and thus the hitch coupling operation can be facilitated.

Driving aiding system

In a driving aiding system for displaying a picked-up image of a rear-view camera equipped onto a rear portion of a vehicle on a screen of a displaying means arranged at a position which can be viewed from a driver's seat when the vehicle is to be backed, a locus estimated line of a hitch which is equipped onto a rear portion of the vehicle is superposed on the picked-up image of the rear-view camera to display when a predetermined instruction input is received.

Growing community of inventors

Yokohama, Japan

Ryosuke Iida