Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. announced a new video-processing technology that gives drivers a 360-degree wraparound view of a vehicle's perimeter in real time, offering a visual guide while parking, passing on a narrow street, or seeing around corners at intersections with poor sightlines.

The system uses four externally mounted cameras on the vehicle. It synthesizes the images using the company's "3-D virtual projection/point of view conversion technology."

Here's how it actually works: First, video images are projected onto a virtual 3-D curved plane as a virtual 3-D video. Then the system converts the images into views from any desired prospective of the vehicle's surroundings (dubbed "omni-view.") In addition, the system can transition smoothly from one view to another due to its continuous interpolation of different points of view, fields of view, and sightlines.

Fujitsu plans to present the new technology at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems & ITS America's 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition, which runs from November 16 to 20 in New York.