Patent ID: 7312723

Claim:
An automobile IR night vision device, comprising: an IR camera for recording image data that represent the surroundings of an automobile, a display for displaying image data fed to it, an image processing unit that is connected to the IR camera and is suitable for processing the image data fed from the IR camera, and a control unit for controlling the IR night vision device, wherein image data representing a coherent image section is selected with the aid of a selection criterion in the course of processing from the fed image data, and the selected image section is passed on for displaying to the display, and wherein the selection criterion is parameterized on the basis of data from a sensor for detecting the vehicle surroundings adapted for categorizing the detected surroundings in terms of traffic situations, and the control unit parameterizes the selection criterion as a function of the detected, categorized traffic situation for selection and alignment of different sizes of data which are fed to the image processing unit and reproduced on the display.