Patent ID: 8384782

Claim:
An apparatus for displaying a bird's eye view image, comprising: a plurality of on-vehicle cameras photographing surrounding objects of a vehicle; an image-converting unit wherein the image converting unit processes images obtained by the on-vehicle cameras, corrects lens distortion in each of images photographed by the on-vehicle cameras, converts a view point, trims display areas, and synthesizes a bird's eye view image around the vehicle by connecting the trimmed display areas; and an on-vehicle display unit displaying the synthesized bird's eye view image to a driver or an occupant, wherein the image-converting unit produces first through n+1 TH bird's eye view images by sequentially drawing the second through n+1 TH bird's eye view images for second through n+1 TH reference heights, which are sequentially higher than ground level indicated by a first reference height, when a three-dimensional obstacle placed adjacent to a seam is suitably detected from a bird's eye view image of around the vehicle, where n is an integer greater than 0, in addition to drawing the bird's eye view image for the ground level, and once the view point is converted, converts a view point of an image from a side view to a top view of the vehicle, and wherein image converting unit, converts the distortion-corrected image into an image seen from above the vehicle with reference to a view point-correcting look-up table, trims first through n+1 TH display areas from the view point-converted image with reference to first through n+1 TH display area-trimming look-up tables corresponding to the first through n+1 TH reference heights, the first through n+1th reference heights including a first reference height 1 corresponding to the ground level and a reference height n+1 higher than the ground level, further sequentially converts the reference heights, and synthesizes the first through n+1 TH bird's eye view images by connecting the first through n+1 TH display areas.