New Car Sensor System Simulates Birds-Eye View

narramissic writes "Remember when you had to turn around in your seat to parallel park? Ok, maybe you still do, but if you drive a Nissan, those days may soon be behind you. The company's 'Around View Monitor system' displays a virtual bird's-eye view of the car and what's around it. Video from four small video cameras with wide-angle lenses — two mounted on the underside of the wing mirrors, one at the front under the grill and one at the rear under the license plate — is displayed on the navigation system monitor so that it appears to be a view from above the car and sonar sensors at each corner of the vehicle provide an audible warning when it is coming close to an object or person. And as if that weren't enough... the system also projects the car's future course based on the current direction of the wheels."

Comments

And...

[Cyno01]

How long does it take to flip through the views of all these cameras, look at your projected course, adjust, look at your new projected course... They're called bumpers for a reason. Well, they used to be anyway, some years ago manufacturers decided to take all utility out of them...

It's got a lot of coolness factor to it but...

[mark-t]

I'd be concerned about the possibility that people could become dependant on these features after driving with them for a while, causing otherwise normal almost used defensive driving skills to atrophy, and setting up for an accident if (when) the system malfunctions.

Re:It's got a lot of coolness factor to it but...

[Opportunist]

That danger is there. You can already see it in people who're used to non-blocking breaks. Should they ever have to drive a car without ABS, you see a lot of interesting skid marks on the road.

Then again, I think ABS avoided more accidents than it caused, and so will this system. Yes, should it fail the person used to it will be more accident prone, but still, we'll see fewer accidents where the driver failed to see someone in the dead corner.

In fact, my dad just IM'd...

[Animaether]

...he has a trucking company (long haul, 18-wheeler, whatever you want to call them) and he wrote "I want that on our trucks right now - do you know how many ripped skirts, tyre wear, bicycle accidents, problems with poles etc. that would save us?" And he has some of the best drivers in the nation - accidents like that just happen -because- it's damn near impossible to see anything.. A top-down view of the truck outline and everything around it would be a very worthy investment indeed.

I'm waiting for the first lawsuit ...

[IchBinEinPenguin]

... after the cameras fail to spot something (or someone).

Re:Not so hot

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the convienent, much cheaper and simpler feature of just turning down the side-view mirrors when the car is in reverse...

But what really gets me is why it's called parallel parking, when it's the complete opposite!

Re:AVM in action

[Dun Malg]

While it's an interesting concept, especially in Tokyo where you regularly see microvans in spaces with an inch to spare (it's a tax thing, not land cost), do we have anything but PR here?

This could be just another flavour of concept-car, in which case it's no more now than it was in 60s Mechanic's Illustrated. (Yes, I was promised flying cars when I grew up, and I'm kinda bitter.) This isn't the same class as the "flying car". We already have cameras and monitors in cars. This is simply an evolutionary improvement. We will be seeing this, and probably quite soon.

The crucial bug to be defeated is it must see everything yet not generate false positives, and that's a very difficult "last mile" to accomplish. Where we are right now is your ubercar backup sensor causes very expensive damage because it was confused the antique metal bar fence. This system is basically four video cameras. Video cameras are not confused by wrought iron fences. You're confusing this with purely non-visual ultrasonic proximity detection systems. This system is supplemented with sonar prox units for collision warning, but it is primarily a visible light based system.

Is it really too much to read and understand the /. blurb in its entirety?

Re:Not so hot

[Dun Malg]

I mean, Toyota has this system where the car parks itself (http://www.hiptechblog.com/2006/02/25/toyotas-parallel-parking-assist/). So tell me, how does this Nissan toy improve over that? Please. Toyota's auto-park system is a joke. It's for jackasses who never learned to parallel park and can't do it without five feet of clearance and a dozen back-and-forth motions. The Toyota system requires too much clearance front and back to be useful. The minimum space requirement is large enough that I could park in the space myself with my eyes closed. The kind of tight spaces I'd need help with, it can't figure out.