Toyota Patents Cloaking Device To Make Car Pillars Appear Transparent (thedrive.com)

Toyota has patented a cloaking device that aims to make big, chunky car pillars transparent. The "apparatuses and methods for making an object appear transparent" which Toyota just patented uses cleverly placed mirrors to bend light around an object making it visible from the other side. The Drive reports: So you're not really seeing through the pillars, you're seeing around them. This is a much cheaper option than adding more cameras and screens all over the place and much more realistic than Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. The patent was filed with the U.S. patent office by Toyota North America, so if Toyota does go forward with this technology, we can probably expect to see it in cars in the U.S.

Comments

it's gotten ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

my 2017 car has 12 airbags with 6 in the pillars and all the pillars are as thick as coffee cups and i cant see shit out of any other window but the windshield

Re:it's gotten ridiculous

[Grishnakh]

Do you want to die when you have a small accident? That's why.

Lots of glass means not so much steel to protect you from side impacts. Airbags in the A-pillars keep you from dying or being maimed in many types of accidents.

Also, these "workarounds" work a lot better than using your eyes. Rearview cameras have fisheye lenses for a much wider field-of-view than you normally have, and they show you what's directly behind the car. Many children are run over every year by their parents or others when backing out of driveways. It's physically impossible to see a child directly behind a car from the driver's seat, even in older cars. And when I'm backing out of tight parking spaces, the radars in my rear bumper can see oncoming traffic that it's physically impossible for me to see from the driver's seat.