Patent ID: 7312810

Claim:
A wide-angle image-generating device, said wide-angle image-generating device comprising a wide-angle imaging device and a computational processing device, wherein the wide-angle imaging device comprises a reflecting mirror having a convex reflecting plane whose angle θ has the minimum range of (θ 1 ≦θ≧θ 2 , −90°≦θ 1 ≦90°, −90°≦θ 2 ≦90°, θ 1 <θ 2 ), wherein a reference optical axis is defined in an arbitrary direction perpendicular to the central rotational axis of a rotary-symmetrical body, and the direction of the reference optical axis is taken to be 0 degrees; also comprises an imaging device that has a principal point on the central rotational axis of the reflecting mirror, forms a reflected image of the reflecting mirror, and picks up objects in a range of at least angle θ around the central rotational axis of the reflecting mirror; and is mounted in a plane perpendicular to the reference optical axis, with the central rotational axis of the reflecting mirror tilted in any in-plane tilt direction of the central rotational axis; and the computational processing device comprises a developed-image generating unit for performing computational processing on the image obtained from the wide-angle imaging device and generating a developed image, and an output-image generating unit for tilting the developed image according to the in-plane tilt direction of the central rotational axis, converting the data format of the developed image into a usable output format and generating an output image.