Jaguar and Land Rover Just Created Transparent Pillars For Cars

cartechboy writes We've all been there, driving down a city street and we miss that pedestrian or bicycle because they are in our blind spot. Not the blind spot behind us, but covered up by the A-pillar on your vehicle. This is a growing concern as pillars and cars in general bulk up to meet new, ever stricter safety standards. Now Jaguar and Land Rover might have come up with a solution that eliminates the risk: transparent pillars. Imagine having zero blinds spots as you pull up to that intersection. No concerns about not seeing something or someone that's hidden by that large A-pillar. The technology is called 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen and it provides a 360-degree view out of the vehicle. How does it work? Essentially, a screen embedded in the surface of each pillar inside the car relays a live video feed from cameras covering the angles outside the car. To avoid overloading the driver the screens are off in default mode, and are only activated automatically when the driver uses a turn signal or checks over their head to switch lanes. While there's zero mention of when this tech will go into production, it's clear, this is the future and it's crazy.

Comments

Volvo

[Monkk]

Didn't Volvo prototype something like this a while back with some transparent triangles embedded in the frame?

Re:Volvo

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Volvo prototype something like this a while back with some transparent triangles embedded in the frame?

A while back, as in 13 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_SCC

Not transparent...

[Arkh89]

Not transparent... but "augmented".
(misleading title, sloppy journalistic work... as always)

You mean Tata

[Virtucon]

Tata Motors owns both Jaguar and Land Rover, so Tata Motors has invented.. or Jaguar and Land Rover, divisions of Tata Motors

Re:You mean Tata

[Balthisar]

Remember that Tata bought JLR from Ford, and Ford had made huge progress in improving JLR quality -- especially Jaguar (yes, ignorant people still say Ford sucks, but this isn't the late 20th century any more).

When Tata buys JLR (or Geely buys Volvo) this is a complicated trade and not as simple as "new owner starts with bad quality." Aside from the physical assets like the plants, there are large layers of technology transfer agreements (who owns Jaguar's aluminum self-pierce rivet technology?), purchasing agreements (Ford still supplies both Geely and Tata critical parts), and consulting agreements (product design engineering support, manufacturing support, etc.). Of course over time all of these will dissipate, but it takes one or more whole new generations of vehicle platforms for this to happen.

In the meantime the JLR and Volvo plants are still extant and operated by the same people who've always operated them. A new owner cannot simply walk in and change the entire manufacturing process and quality processes; that's too expensive and building cars is much, much, much more complex than the average person can fathom.

The trend these days is for the acquiring company to get better rather than to make the purchased company worse.

overwhat?

[TheCarp]

Unless there is something particularly distracting about them....like a perceptable lag, then I don't see how being able to see more of whats around you can be overload. I am already used to looking at a scene that includes the sky, trees, and a whole mess of information beyond what I strictly need....hell, half the road is generally irrelevant as long as everybody is doing their job.

OTOH at night, screens emit light, so what it will do is light up the inside of the car making occupants more visible than they would be during the day, and possibly more visible than the pedestrian outside the car, I almost wonder if more accidents wont be saved by calling up the attention of pedestrians to the car than the other way around.

Re:overwhat?

[Sarlok]

To clearly see a scene on a screen, you focus on the screen. To clearly see what's outside the car, you focus outside the car. One distraction is that your eyes have different points to focus on to see contiguous parts of the same screen. You don't really get to experience that distracting effect from a flat 2d picture or video of the system.

Created?

[Dan East]

Describing a concept, and making a fake CGI video of how it might work, does not mean they have "created it". They haven't even revealed where this is at in the development cycle, and the video is very clearly pure CGI. (for one thing, nothing on these augmented displays will look right except from the driver's perspective, which will be annoying for passengers, and the camera does not show the driver's perspective in this video).

With the "B column" (the column between the front and back door), why should I have to turn my head >90 degrees to see an oddly shaped screen that shows me what is only right behind the column? When I signal how about show me EVERYTHING to that side of the vehicle on a screen that's, um, like right in front of me so I don't have to take me eyes off the road or crane my neck?

Or just make the A-pillar narrower.

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Here's a better idea - make the A-pillar (as viewed from the drivers position) no wider than the distance between the center of your eyes. This prevents the pillar from blocking your vision, and no electronics are needed.

Re:Or just make the A-pillar narrower.

[HornWumpus]

What the GP describes was called the invisible A-pillar and was SOP for decades.

A smaller pillar could do the job just fine. But it could not be stamped and folded out of cheap sheet metal.

Re:How far will it go?

[Noah Haders]

+1 insightful. People aren't running over pedestrians due to nefarious overly-wide A pillars; they're running over pedestrians because they're not paying attention and are talking on their phones and are more concerned with looking for a break in traffic so they can gun it through the intersection so they just run over people. it's ultimately because people are selfish. that's why when I'm a pedestrian I carry a "deterrent".

Re:Wow - technology continues to advance!

[AK Marc]

Not at dealerships. Last time I went to a new car dealer, I found the 2-year old like-new certified pre-owned car at 90% of the MSRP. Sure, I could have looked in the classifieds, but I haven't found the prices drop as fast as people assert.

Many people assert that you have an increased chance of a lemon. If you have a lemon, are you more likely to sell it when it's showing no problems, or keep it? So, lemons would be disproportionately for sale. If you disagree, what part do you disagree with?