Patent ID: 8854463

Claim:
A bird's-eye view image generating apparatus method comprising: inputting an image of an area surrounding a vehicle photographed by an image capture device installed on the vehicle; detecting when an obstacle that exists in the area surrounding the vehicle in a direction the image-capture device is pointed, the obstacle having a predicted contact portion at a predetermined height above a surface of a road that is captured in the image of the surroundings of the vehicle, the predicted contact portion being a portion of the obstacle which will make initial contact with the vehicle when the vehicle moves toward the obstacle; setting, when the obstacle is detected, a virtual projection plane at the height above the surface of the road where the predicted contact portion is detected, and performing viewpoint conversion processing in which pixels of the image are projected onto the virtual projection plane, thereby generating a bird's-eye view image that is an image of the area surrounding the vehicle in the direction the image capture device is pointed as viewed from a virtual viewpoint above the vehicle that accurately reflects the distance between the vehicle and the predicted contact portion of the obstacle; detecting an amount of movement of the vehicle; and, switching an operation mode from a road-surface projection mode to a virtual-plane projection mode when 1) the obstacle is detected and 2) it is determined that, based on the detected amount of movement of the vehicle, that the vehicle has moved by an amount corresponding to an allowable-movement distance stored in a distance table in which a height of the predicted contact portion of the obstacle and an allowable-movement distance for the vehicle are associated with each other; wherein in the road-surface projection mode, the viewpoint conversion processing is performed so as to project the pixels of the image onto a projection plane set at a height of the road surface in the vehicle surroundings, and in the virtual-plane projection mode, the viewpoint conversion processing is performed so as to project the pixels of the image onto the virtual projection plane.