Patent ID: 7209221

Claim:
A method for obtaining and displaying information about one or more objects in an environment around a vehicle to a driver of the vehicle, comprising: emitting infrared light from the vehicle into a portion of the environment around the vehicle; receiving infrared light from the portion of environment around the vehicle; determining the location of one or more objects in the environment around the vehicle relative to the vehicle and from which the infrared light is reflected based on the emission of the infrared light and reception of the infrared light; determining an identification of one or more of objects from which light is reflected based at least in part on the received infrared light whereby different types of objects have different identifications; providing a plurality of different icons for the different identifications of objects such that each type of object has a unique icon; displaying on a display visible to the driver icons representative of the objects and their position relative to the vehicle based on the determined location and the determined identification of each object; and selecting the icon of each object being displayed based on the identification of the object which is determined based at least in part on the received infrared light such that the icons are selected based at least in part on the received infrared light.