The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 10, 2013
Filed:
Dec. 21, 2009
Weijie Liu, Kanagawa, JP;
Weijie Liu, Kanagawa, JP;
Panasonic Corporation, Osaka, JP;
Abstract
An image pickup device () wherein a target area, on which an exposure control is based, is accurately detected to perform the exposure control most favorably to the target. The image pickup device () comprises a feature detecting unit () that detects, based on the contour of the target, a target candidate from a picked-up image (S); a block voting unit () that votes those ones of a plurality of blocks to which the target detected by the feature detecting unit () belong, the plurality of blocks being obtained by dividing the area of the picked-up image into the plurality of blocks; a vote compiling unit () that adds vote results (S) together on a block-by-block basis over a plurality of frames, thereby compiling the vote results (S); a significance determining unit () that select, based on a compilation result (S), blocks to be used for controlling the exposure; and a control unit () that controls the exposure of an image pickup unit () based on the brightness of the blocks selected by the significance determining unit ().