A system and method synthesizing images of a locale to generate a composite image
that provide a panoramic view of the locale. A video camera moves along a street
recording images of objects along the street. A GPS receiver and inertial navigation
system provide the position of the camera as the images are being recorded. The
images are indexed with the position data provided by the GPS receiver and inertial
navigation system. The composite image is created on a column-by-column basis by
determining which of the acquired images contains the desired pixel column, extracting
the pixels associated with the column, and stacking the columns side by side. The
composite images are stored in an image database and associated with a street name
and number range of the street being depicted in the image. The image database
covers a substantial amount of a geographic area allowing a user to visually navigate
the area from a user terminal.
