Patent ID: 7903843

Claim:
An image processing apparatus for use in a vehicle comprising: an image capture unit for capturing an image of vehicle environment; an image processing unit for generating a bird's eye image based on the image captured by the image capture unit; a driving condition detection unit for detecting a driving condition of the vehicle; a positioning unit for positioning a parking area in the bird's eye image generated by the image processing unit when the driving condition of the vehicle detected by the driving condition detection unit is a backing for parking; a parking image generation unit for generating a parking image that includes an area view based at least on a portion of the parking area positioned by the positioning unit in the bird's eye image and a portion of the vehicle; a display unit for displaying the parking image on a display screen; a parking operation detection unit for detecting one of an end and an ending of a parking operation based on the driving condition detected by the driving condition detection unit; and a center position setting unit for setting a center position of the bird's eye image based on a detection result of the parking operation detection unit, wherein the center position setting unit sets the center position of the bird's eye image to a center of the vehicle in the bird's eye image when the parking operation detected by the parking operation detection unit is one of the end and the ending of the parking operation, the center position setting unit sets the center position of the bird's eye image to a predetermined distance in a rear of the vehicle in the bird's eye image when the parking operation detected by the parking operation detection unit is not one of the end and the ending of the parking operation, and the parking image generation unit generates the parking image having the parking area included therein based on the bird's eye image that is centered at the center position set by the center position setting unit.