Driving assist method and driving assist apparatus
First Claim
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1. A driving assist method using an image-taking device mounted on a vehicle and displaying a driving assist image on a display device, the method comprising:
- switching a vehicle light device between luminous and non-luminous periods at a predetermined frequency whereby a human eye perceives the vehicle lighting device as ON;
taking an image of an area in the vicinity of the vehicle with the image-taking device in a non-luminous period of the vehicle lighting device;
forming composite data by combining portions of a plurality of sets of image data generated by the image taking, each set representing an image captured during one non-luminous period; and
displaying a driving assist image, based on the composite data, on the display device.
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Abstract
In a driving assist system for a vehicle, a camera driver controls an on-board rear camera to take an image of an area around a vehicle only when light-emitting diodes of the tail lights and brake lights are non-luminous, responsive to an image pickup timing signal output from a light control. An image processor executes panoramic view conversion of image data input from the camera driver, stores the converted data in an image memory, and displays a composite image by combining a plurality of sets of panoramic view data.
21 Citations
9 Claims
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1. A driving assist method using an image-taking device mounted on a vehicle and displaying a driving assist image on a display device, the method comprising:
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switching a vehicle light device between luminous and non-luminous periods at a predetermined frequency whereby a human eye perceives the vehicle lighting device as ON; taking an image of an area in the vicinity of the vehicle with the image-taking device in a non-luminous period of the vehicle lighting device; forming composite data by combining portions of a plurality of sets of image data generated by the image taking, each set representing an image captured during one non-luminous period; and displaying a driving assist image, based on the composite data, on the display device. - View Dependent Claims (9)
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2. A driving assist apparatus which acquires a plurality of sets of image data from an image-taking device mounted on a vehicle having a vehicle lighting device, stores each set of the image data in an image data storage device, combines portions of the plurality of sets of image data to form a driving assist image, and outputs the driving assist image to a display device, the apparatus comprising:
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a light control for repeatedly switching the vehicle lighting device between luminous and non-luminous periods at a frequency whereby a human eye sees the vehicle lighting device as ON; an image-taking controller controlling the image-taking device to capture an image of the vicinity around the vehicle only in a non-luminous period of the vehicle lighting device, and acquiring a set of image data from the image-taking device for each image captured, for storage in the image data storage device; and an output controller forming composite data by using the plurality of sets of image data stored in the image data storage, and displaying the driving assist image, based on the composite data, on the display device. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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Specification