Development of “All-Around View” System

This paper describes the “All-Around-View” monitoring system for assisting the driver's outward view. This system creates a virtual plan view image around the car by manipulating eight vehicle-mounted CCD cameras. The plan view image is provided to the driver when parking the vehicle, making it easier to see the circumstances around the car.

Eye-point conversion is the basic technology underlying this system. It makes a virtual camera image by using the image data obtained with the actual cameras. The system converts and synthesizes eight images to create one virtual image. Image conversion is accomplished by replacement and composition of the source image pixels. The application program of this system makes rules for pixel replacement and color mixture and generates transformation tables. The software determines automatically which range each camera should follow based on the specifications, location and direction of all the cameras (actual cameras and virtual camera) and data on the vehicle shape.

The prototype system hardware can execute the generated tables and make 30 images every second. The time required for conversion and composition of a virtual image is less than the interval of one frame, enabling the system to create “all-around-view” images and provide them to the driver in real time.