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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."
See the link:
https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/INTRODUCTION/DETAILS/AVM/index.html
New Car Sensor System Simulates Birds-Eye View
I see, so they've perfected a computerized bird-feces targeting system?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
a shame the cameras are placed so low. With more/other cameras, you might see a bike next to your car, a pedestrian behind your parked car... Especially useful for larger cars, vans, trucks,...
The safety benefits of such a system are immense, but; Does this mean driving down the highway is going to be like playing some strange version of Grand Turismo?
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...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Riding shotgun !
I'm sorry to disturb the parallel parking conveniences day dreaming of some, but the real advantage is the elimination of blind spots. For starters, if every SUV (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/22/earlyshow/living/parenting/main526462.shtml), truck (http://www.oregonlive.com/metro/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1192245943100770.xml&coll=7), tractor (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1046/j.1440-1754.1998.00177.x?cookieSet=1) or van had such a device, thousands of lives around the globe would be saved each year.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
IIRC, Microsoft already made this a while ago.
Forget "birds eye" view - I want a "car's nose view." A pair of cameras mounted at the very front of the car - one camera facing right and the other facing left. That way I can see "around" hedges, tress, fences and other visual obstructions when crossing or turning onto a road.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually, Nissan's system is much better than Toyota's automatic-parallel-parking, because all of these technologies will come in handy all the time, and not only while parallel parking. Imagine playing Grand Theft Auto with future trajectory projected :)
Mark me as a troll as much as you want but anyone who's been through a Terry stop (or, for that matter, any sort of police stop) in the US will want this recorded along with a few well-placed mics for audio. At least 45 minutes' recording. Just in case you missed it, here's a good example of the reason why. I've been through such stops in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania and Maryland and I've never been guilty of Driving While Black.
...soon you won't need your own cameras on the car, Homeland Security can just let you know where you are and what's around you (where you're going... who you are with... what you ate for lunch... what you last read... etc)
This would be funny if it wasn't true - federal police are now being given access to military satellites.
...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.
1. If there's a bug in the code, the problem will manifest itself on screen as opposed to as a car collision and a huge gasoline-fuelled explosion hellfire over the blood splattered bodies of innocent babies that the automated parallel parking system accidentally runs over.
2. You can practice your parallel parking.
A fast cowboy since 2007
can it see magnetic fields? Do not insult the birds.
... after the cameras fail to spot something (or someone).
I like the imagery, but I believe Toyota's system only turns your steering wheel and tells you to accelerate/brake. And maybe, just maybe, after it parked your car twenty times, you'll notice how parallel parking works and might even be able to do it yourself some day.
But seriously, when parking spaces are tight (not talking America here), it'd much prefer a system that tells me "Yes, you can park there" and then basically does the parking for me instead of just some video cameras that leave the judging up to me.
I wonder how well Nissan's system works in the dark.
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!
Surely it would be easier to attach one of those new dragonfly-drones to the roof of the Nissan and launch it when parking, saving immensely in the computer processing power required.
This package is nice but does it email the picture to your spouse/parents if it detects a bump?
As an owner I can suggest that the Nissan 350Z needs this feature first as it has arguably the worst rear visibility of any of the current cars in the Nissan line up.
I want small drone airplanes continuously flying above the major highways and streets and broadcasting the observed view over a TV-band. Anybody with a compatible set within range will then be able to observe traffic incidents, police traps, and road repairs in real time.
Supposedly, our military's use of such things is rapidly growing. Police use is growing too. Hopefully, the technology will allow peaceful civilian use soon.
It can be advertising-sponsored — the images may display an advertising logo in a corner of the screen, or something...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What a pointless invention. My car already has rear view mirrors, and my head, in fact the whole skull, rather amazingly, can actually be swivelled backwards, which is a nice feature as it makes it a lot easier to aim a set of optical sensors for visual inspection - the technical term is "eyes" - and detect and identify, and thereby avoid, obstacles that may appear behind the car as it is put into reverse. This, combined with a so-called brain, makes it possible to steer and park the car.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
The demo video somebody else linked to looks interesting, but it's easy to synthesize a good "top-down" view from side views when you're on an empty parking lot (i.e. flat surface). It would have to look strange to see a side view of the car next to you munged to appear as top-down though...
My server
In fact, that's at the root of the reason why I refuse to fit a bow thruster on my boat. Helming skills are used sufficiently infrequently by most people (including me) that they need frequent reinforcement. If you get used to not having to compensate for wind and water while mooring, what is the betting that just when you run into problems you flatten the batteries that power the thrusters?
Pining for the fjords
George Foreman must be ecstatic.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Obviously, they haven't realized that the principles of Shaolin kung fu can be applied to parallel parking...
sure it's neat, but I still think it's sad that we're building such darn fragile cars in the first place. Impacts at less than 5mph should be tolerable - the fender-bender, key scratch, dent repair industry must consume billions each year, not to mention insurance headaches, time lost from work etc. I'd rather see a car with some big honkin' soft, non-marking rubber pads surrounding it than a car with a really expensive imaging system that essentially serves the purpose of protecting itself.
Also, this system doesn't stop the jellopies on either side of you from using the traditional vestibulocochlear method of parallel parking, leaving your insurance company laughing at you. Now if the cameras could be set to be triggered in a record mode whenever motion sensors were triggered so that you could go back and see the license plate numbers of the folks that rammed you, and video evidence of it - that would be useful.
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I hope they will sell (or license, if they've patented it) the system for other vehicles.
Yeah, I know, if it dies, you're back to the old fashioned way. But if it dies, there's going to be no picture, so you'll know. It's not going to silently edit out that idiot in the Mini Cooper hanging close to your right rear tire.
One of my co-workers is working on putting a couple of webcams in his car to record what happened in case he was involved in an accident (I won't get into his being a former demolition derby driver). What's ironic about this article is that we were talking about mounting small cameras in the wing mirrors for aiding in parking - he drives a Prius and it is darn hard to judge where the corners of the car are.
I agree with you. It's not that hard to learn how to parallel park. With a good teacher, and proper instruction, you can learn it in about 10 minutes. I find it quite scary that there are people on the road who don't have enough control over the car to parallel park. If you can't control where the car is going at a low speed, what happens when something unexpected happens on the highway.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Otherwise, this is a bogus argument
There's no "argument" involved at all in this. I don't like it when a bunch of money grubbing idiots call me a sinner for what kind of movie I watch, and I don't like when a bunch of money grubbing idiots call me a sinner for the kind of car I drive. Jerry Falwell, Rex Humbard, Al Gore, Al Sharpton, Rachel Carson, the head of NOW, the boss of the Sierra Club, are all doing the exact same thing, and are cut from the same damn cloth - pointing at other people, dividing society, and begging for more money so they can do it more. If you took the head of every not-for-profit organization, and shot them, this world would be a better place, and of you fools that go and read the latest MoveOn.org action alert with baited breaths, or read on about some great liberal conspiracy, you are all just a bunch of stupid suckers.
Honestly, I don't like SUVs - as I prefer the mix of a genuine pickup truck for hauling stuff, and a family sedan for moving people. If I had more money, I'd get back my Pontiac GTO for commuting to the train station, or short family trips. But, if all these assholes keep bitching about my lifestyle, I'd just as soon buy an SUV loaded with a bunch of warmovies, guns, liquor and porn, and tell all of these faux-righteous jackasses to go fuck themselves...
This is my sig.
The reference point is the line of the road edge, not other parked cars. You are parking parallel to the curb.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Ages: 0, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7
Putting even a pair of car seats next to each other is hard, because there is no room between them to fiddle with the seat belt fasteners. Three in a row is horrible.
If I can't use the front seat, then I think the only choice smaller than a full-size van is the Chevy Suburban.
I don't want to slide all over the road in a full-size van or Chevy Suburban. I don't like rollovers. I hear that Canada even gets ice on the road. WTF? Canada sucks.
And don't forget having the judgement to know where you can and can't park. My wife and I had a blast while in a restaurant in Dinard, France last year as we watched this lady trying to parallel park in a space that was clearly too small for her car. She bumped the cars in front and behind at least four times each before the light bulb came on and she left in search of parking elsewhere.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This system has been in Nissan cars for several years, at least 3 to my knowledge.
Perhaps it's new in the USA, but in Japan it's commonplace.
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
It'll make drivers think that it's not happening to themselves. Sometimes, video-game interfaces are no good in real life.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Your distinction between "then" and "than" is too simplistic and incomplete. Your first example is correct, your second one (wrongly "correcting" the tagging) is not. It is good to see you taking an interest in the difference between "then" and "than" but you obviously haven't completed your study. You can become better educated on these two words at the following links:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/then
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/than
I wonder how this handles low- and no-light situations. Big floodlights on each side of the vehicle?
Tssssch. One of the few useful things Dad has ever told me about driving is how to reverse-park. You can do the whole thing in your mirrors if you know (a) aim your rear nearside corner mid-way between the two vehicles, and (b) aim your rear offside corner at the middle of the car behind's numberplate.
:)
Other than that, if you don't know the length of your own car, what the hell are you doing sitting behind the wheel?
Oh... vauxhall drivers don't have to know their own length nor look around nor use mirrors nor use cameras. They just wait for the crunch
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn