In-vehicle camera system and image processing apparatus
AssigneeSony Group Corporation
InventorSatoshi Nakayama
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Automatic exposure control of an in-vehicle camera is performed under dark driving environments such as at night. An in-vehicle camera system includes a vehicle camera mounted in a vehicle configured to capture surroundings of the vehicle, and control circuitry that controls an exposure level of an image captured by the vehicle camera, the control of the exposure level being based on brightness information of a detection area set within the image, the detection area being a portion of the captured image and configured to output the image having exposure control performed thereon to a display.
Claims13
An image processing apparatus, comprising:
- control circuitry configured to:
- receive an image of surroundings of a first vehicle, wherein the image processing apparatus is in the first vehicle;
- determine an evaluation value based on a maximum value in a brightness horizontal profile and a local minimum value in the brightness horizontal profile;
- detect lights of a second vehicle within a portion of the received image based on an interval between two adjacent local maximum values and an average of the two adjacent local maximum values, wherein the average is larger than the local minimum value;
- and
- execute, based on the determined evaluation value, at least one of exposure time control or gain control, wherein
- the local minimum value is between the two adjacent local maximum values in the brightness horizontal profile,
- the brightness horizontal profile is based on the portion of the received image,
- the second vehicle is different from the first vehicle, and
- the lights of the second vehicle are displayed separately on a display screen.
An image processing method, comprising:
- receiving an image of surroundings of a first vehicle;
- determining an evaluation value based on a maximum value in a brightness horizontal profile and a local minimum value in the brightness horizontal profile;
- detecting lights of a second vehicle within a portion of the received image based on an interval between two adjacent local maximum values and an average of the two adjacent local maximum values, wherein the average is larger than the local minimum value;
- and
- executing, based on the determined evaluation value, at least one of exposure time control or gain control, wherein
- the local minimum value is between the two adjacent local maximum values in the brightness horizontal profile,
- the brightness horizontal profile is based on the portion of the received image,
- the second vehicle is different from the first vehicle, and
- the lights of the second vehicle are displayed separately on a display screen.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.