IMAGE PICKUP AREA EXPANDING MEMBER AND VEHICLE PERIPHERY MONITORING DEVICE USING THE SAME

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an expanded image eliminating shadow sections or image blurrs by bending a prism body structure just at a prescribed angle in the direction of an image pickup device to the optical axis of the image pickup device. SOLUTION: A image pickup area expanding member 10 provided between an image pickup device 1 and an object is provided almost vertically to an optical axis L1 of the image pickup device 1 and composed of a prism body structure 10A bent just at an angleβin the direction of the image pickup device 1 to the optical axis L1 as a whole for defracting incident object light and making the object light of a wide angle incident to the image pickup device together with a plane part 10C for making the object light incident to the image pickup device while advancing it straight and a curved surface part 10B for smoothly connecting the both. Thus, since the incident angle of object light to the prism body structure 10A is reduced just for the bending angleβ, it does not exceed a critical angle. As a result, the full reflection of incident light does not occur on the prism body structure 10A so that the shadow sections of the picked-up image can be eliminated.