Method and device for visualizing a motor vehicle environment with environment-dependent fusion of an infrared image and a visual image
First Claim
1. A method of visualizing an environment of a vehicle, the method comprising the acts of:
- supplying a visual image of the environment, the visual image showing visible objects located in the environment;
supplying an infrared image of the environment, the infrared image showing infrared radiation emanating from the visible and other object; and
providing a fused image based on the visual and infrared images and at least one image adaptation parameter affecting image presentation and associated with at least one calibration, the fused image having a visual fraction, including the visible objects, and an infrared fraction, including the infrared radiation, that are superosed and weighted based on a condition of the environment.
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Abstract
A method is provided for visualizing the environment of a vehicle, particularly in darkness. For improving known methods, a weighted superimposition of isochronous and same-location image pairs of a visual image and an infrared image are performed for forming a fusion image. For a further improvement, it is provided to make the weighting dependent on the environment; thus, in darkness, a higher weighting and therefore a stressing of the infrared information is provided with respect to the visual information in the fusion image. In fog, it is provided to weight the visual information clearly higher in comparison to the infrared information, whereby the infrared information, which is often not very helpful in fog, is largely not taken into account in the fusion image. For implementing the method, a system is provided having a color-sensitive visual camera, an infrared camera and a fusion or superposing device, which superposes isochronous and same-location image pairs by pixels or areas and/or forms average values.
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Citations
53 Claims
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1. A method of visualizing an environment of a vehicle, the method comprising the acts of:
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supplying a visual image of the environment, the visual image showing visible objects located in the environment; supplying an infrared image of the environment, the infrared image showing infrared radiation emanating from the visible and other object; and providing a fused image based on the visual and infrared images and at least one image adaptation parameter affecting image presentation and associated with at least one calibration, the fused image having a visual fraction, including the visible objects, and an infrared fraction, including the infrared radiation, that are superosed and weighted based on a condition of the environment. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47)
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48. A system for visualizing an environment of a vehicle, the system comprising:
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a visual camera; an infrared camera; a first normalizing device for normalizing a visual image of a cutout of the environment of the vehicle supplied by the visual camera; a second normalizing device for normalizing an infrared image of a cutout of the environment of the vehicle supplied by the infrared camera; an alignment device which generates substantially isochronous and same-location image pairs from the visual and infrared images based on at least one adaptation parameter that is associated with a calibration and affects image presentation; and a fusion device configured to generate a fused image by combining the largely isochronous and same-location image pairs, the fused image having a visual fraction and an infrared fraction that are respectively weighted based on a condition of the environment. - View Dependent Claims (49, 50, 51, 52, 53)
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Specification