Looking at ways to improve driver safety on the roads some scientists are looking at a way for drivers to see through walls. Sadly it’s not using some super new visual device but instead using digital imagery from cameras mounted ahead of the vehicle being altered and displayed for the driver to view. Read the full details here.
Now I’ve been waiting for this technology for some time. It’s pretty much used in Sci-Fi films all the time and it doesn’t have any spectacular requirements to implement in its simplest form. That simple form being a display mounted in front of the user and a camera mounted at the front of the vehicle. The user can be in any position, facing backward, even lying on their back or, as we do with drones, not even be there. However, once you start looking at using cameras to see behind walls then you start down an area where you are forced to extrapolate the view and fill in missing bits with data that the camera can not see. Guesses as you like from previous views and knowledge. It’s not easy and I’m sure that they have hit a few challenges. Especially when the reason for the unit is safety. It has to be very careful about missing things that could come back and haunt them. For example the camera sees around the corner and sees a truck parked there. Out of the cameras view is a moving motorbike. The software extrapolates the view and fills in the blanks with, err, blanks because it doesn’t see the bike. The driver takes the corner feeling safe when suddenly the bike appears. Too late. Or maybe not as it depends on the speed of processing, scan rate and the reflexes of the driver. All this they will be looking at now.
However, I don’t see why we can’t use these sorts of systems now for other tasks. Such as bomb disposal, working on waste in a nuclear reactor, deep sea diving etc. All things that could benefit from this and all areas we currently use mass produced carbon units for. We just need to amalgamate technology like the cameras with robotic bodies instead of car bodies and we are away.
Back to vehicles though. Imagine how many women bikers would be saved if the driver in a lorry had an unobstructed view 360 degrees around his vehicle just by turning his head inside his cab. We can do this now with the technology we have so why haven’t we?
Doesn’t make sense to me why this type of technology is not in more widespread use now. It seems only the military use this technology for any real use. I suspect it is a funding issue. Yet here we are funding stage two. I smell politics somewhere.
I don’t follow this at all. How does a camera mounted off the front of a car see through a wall? And waht’s the wall doing there anyway or another way, what’s a car doing driving up to a wall. Why not just a periscope then – that would do the job.
James,
Its talking about cars driving up roads in urban areas being able to see what is around a corner. Imagine a T junction with a building at both sides. You can’t see without sticking your cars nose into the road so your eyes can get a good view. This puts a camera on the front you can view on a screen and its altered to appear to be from your perception. In effect being able to see through the wall of a building. I’d do a diagram but you can imagine it easy enough now.
That was politely put, Lord T. Now I see.
James,
Glad to help.