Patent ID: 8319618

Claim:
An image processing apparatus processing image data obtained by surroundings image of a vehicle through a plurality of imaging devices mounted on the vehicle, comprising: a state information obtaining unit obtaining state information that indicates a state of driving operation of the vehicle; an image storage unit storing a plurality of two-dimensional image data pieces obtained from the plurality of imaging devices whose viewing fields partly overlap with each other; a specifying unit compositing a plurality of two-dimensional image data pieces into a shape of a three-dimensional projection plane when the state information obtaining unit has obtained given state information, and then specifying, in correspondence to the state information, a compositing method for overlapping portions of viewing fields or transformation information to be used for transformation from a three-dimensional image based on the obtained three-dimensional image data into projection image data viewed from a position of a given viewpoint along a given line-of-sight direction; and an image transformation unit transforming the plurality of two-dimensional image data pieces stored in the image storage unit into projection image data viewed from the position of the given viewpoint along the given line-of-sight direction, by using the compositing method or the transformation information specified by the specifying unit.