Sony patents car display that maps parking spots and drives you in
Sony describes a system where a car's camera scans a parking lot to identify other vehicles and people. It creates a top-down digital map showing these objects with icons that describe their color, size, or type. The car then displays this map alongside the live camera view and can automatically drive itself to a selected empty spot.
In the filing’s own words
An image processing apparatus for this determination includes processing circuitry configured to acquire feature information about a vehicle or a person in a parking lot, e.g., information on at least one feature among a color, an orientation, a location, a size, a vehicle brand, and a vehicle type, using information detected by a sensor; and generate a parking lot map including an icon corresponding to the vehicle or the person. The icon includes information on at least one feature among a color, an orientation, a location, a size, a vehicle brand, and a vehicle type of an object such as a vehicle and a person.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A vehicle, comprising: a camera; a display; and processing circuitry configured to acquire feature information about another vehicle in a parking lot, generate a parking lot map including a vehicle icon corresponding to the another vehicle, wherein the vehicle icon indicates the feature information about the another vehicle, wherein the parking lot map is a virtual image of the parking lot viewed from above, control to simultaneously display the parking lot map with the vehicle icon and a camera-captured image captured by the camera, in response to determining a target parking location at which the vehicle is to be parked, control to display, on the parking lot map, information on a parking travel route from a current location of the vehicle to the target parking location, and control the vehicle to travel along the parking travel route from the current location to the target parking location.
Facts
- Company
- Sony (Sony Group Corporation)
- Official title
- INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS, INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD, AND NON-TRANSITORY COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM
- Publication number
- US20260311596A1
- Application number
- 19714676
- Filed
- Jun 22, 2026
- Published
- Oct 8, 2026
- Inventors
- 4
- Claims
- 20
Classified under
G08G 1/143 Physics & computingG06F 3/04817 Physics & computingG06V 20/586 Physics & computingG08G 1/0969 Physics & computingG08G 1/144 Physics & computingMore from Sony in Cars & transport
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.