Patent Document ID: 9088737
Application ID: 11890495
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for visualizing surroundings of a vehicle, the method comprising the acts of: obtaining, by a visual camera, a visual image containing digital data of the surroundings, in order to show visually perceptible objects; obtaining, by an infrared camera, an infrared image containing digital data of the surroundings, in order to show infrared radiation emitted by the visually perceptible objects and/or other objects, wherein the visual camera and the infrared camera form a camera system; calibrating the camera system with respect to a fixed distance corresponding to one of a close range and a far range; fusing, by an image processing unit in the vehicle, the visual image and the infrared image into a target image, which target image is representable in a display unit, in order to simplify an allocation of the infrared radiation emitting objects in a recorded environment, and interrupting the fusing of the visual image and the infrared image automatically by the image processing unit in response to an orientation error exceeding a threshold, which is a function of an environment parameter, in order to represent only one of the visual and infrared images, or none of the images, as the target image, wherein the orientation error is a parallax error owing to the offset optical axes of cameras used to obtain the visual image and the infrared image, respectively, said orientation error occurring in the close range if the fixed distance to which the camera system is calibrated is the far range, and occurring in the far range if the fixed distance to which the camera is calibrated is the close range.