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Driving with Night Vision
gub writes "Cadillac DeVille DHS and DTS 2000 models now have available Night Vision, a driver enhancement system giving you an extended view of the road ahead. Infrared technology detects thermal energy of objects beyond the range of your headlamps or hidden behind the glare of oncoming lights. The thermal images are superimposed via a HUD on your windshield. "
He 'procured' a set of night scopes. I dont know where from, but imagine a 16 year old with a set of those things. His dad was in the military reserves, very active during th gulf wwar, but was a proctologist in civilian life.
now comes the funny part: curfue, 18 miles to get home, and a choice: drive on the interstate, or take the back-roads, lights off...
the bastard only knew there was a cop on to him because of his radar detector, the cop never saw him pass, just got a reading of 145mph
the best part about it was that the kid got caught. I never found out how, but they got him, and strung him up. Attempted vehicular manslaughter, etc.
laugh, but this happened more than 5 years ago, before you could get these things in any sony video camera, back when the technology had a limited availability. Think about it now.
I don't know about legality, however, I think it will probabally result in higher insurance rates for those who don't have a vehicle equipped with the device. Probabally not immediately, but in a few years if it is shown to be helpful. There are already lower rates for cars equipped with airbags, alarm systems, and non-smoking soccer moms.
"Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason." -Seinfeld
I work at a car dealership and i constantly have new car owners pull me aside to get me to disable features they dont want like daytime running lights, remote keyless entry and airbags. People dont want more crap that they dont need in their lives.
Hehe... I like to flash my sim-headlights at oncoming cars.
They do write "not an actual representation" in small letters at the bottom, but they could make the demo a bit more representative...
--
chahast at pangaea dot dhs dot org
Their detection system? His was the only house for miles with a clean, black roof - all the rest had a foot thick layer of frozen snow.
ummmmm yeah like all houses in canada are snow covered year round, take your head out of your ass and look around some day, america is not the world
Only if there are thirty or forty heads sitting in the field smoking up enough of a storm to generate an IR signature. I think they're more likely to repair to someplace with a Playstation.
I wonder if this is the same system that Jaguar cars developed last year? http://www.eet.com/news/98/1013news/night-vision.h tml http://www.babousa.org/viv.html
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Paul Gillingwater
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Eventually it'll be available for non-expensive cars as well, unless the market informs us that nobody really likes it. It'll probably follow the usual cost curve - soak the early adopters for the development costs and find out what features matter, second-wave pricing is much lower due to mass production, then Moore's Law gradually cuts the price further (though maybe not as fast as the computer power price curve, depending on how much of the real job is computer-related as opposed to sensors.)
:-)
The real problem I see with HUDs is how to align the display with the rest of the windshield - the easy way is to just carve out a small section of the bottom of the window for the hud display, but if you're trying to project it on the whole window, you've got to figure out where the driver's head and eyes are so you can align the picture with the real world outside the windshield, a computer-intensive job that's probably too inaccurate to be worth doing, but which would be cool if you could get it right.
Of course, your car also needs a "Use The Force, Luke!" interface to turn the stuff off quickly
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Whos going to use it?, the only people who can afford it are rich people, rich poeple are generally older, old people generally can't handle technolgy. hence to them it will just be annoying, and thats if they can actually figure out how to turn it on!
This HUD is actually installed under the line of sight. Visually it appears above the dashboard and under the front edge of the hood. You can still see everything outside the car normally. This HUD only gives you additional information, it does not block your view.
Yes and no.
Another poster mentioned that stuff on the dash shows up. The problem is that you're gonna get a pair of reflections of the image...
one from the inside and one from the outside.
Pontiac has had HUDs for quite some time, and
I believe that they use a small combiner where the HUD displays. Don't ask me for too many specifics,
I'm a rocket scientist, not an optical engineer.
IR transmissivity is dramatically reduced by water in the air, both visible (fog) and invisible (absolute humidity). Smoke and dust can affect IR visibility especially if the cause of the smoke or dust is associated with thermal activity (an explosion) but in general dust and smoke particles do not block or distort IR energy nearly as much as water.
The military uses absolute humidity to predict IR visibility ranges for various sensors because it's one of the biggest factors affecting IR transmissivity.
Of course, how much the sensor is affected depends on the particular wavelength that sensor is sensitive to... Some of the best IR bands require active cooling to operate properly, but once the sensor is cooled they can provide incredible image resolution, temperature discrimination, and can "see" through dust, smoke, and some gasses without any problems. Water vapor is still a huge problem though.
Short answer - don't expect an IR sensor to work in the rain or through fog, but they should work ok (probably lose some contrast and range) through dust and smoke.
It seems the moderation is often applied in a relative manner. Some stories just don't get any good comments, whereas others get quite a few. The system is really more useful this way instead of all the posts being 0s and 1s, even if they deserve it. You can just moderate all the post down in your mind, if you must.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
If you're concerned about moderation at slashdot, join the discussion at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=mo deration.
Fuel-cell cars kick up significant heat, so they're probably fine in a world with these, but what about pure electrics? Would the brakes and maybe the climate control system be the only significant heat sources? Would they be enough to see an electric car by in warmer months?
A lot of things that ultimately show up in the auto market debut on Cadillac cars. As GM's high-end, they appeal to people with money to spare which is useful when a new tech is just coming out of the lab. A few things that Cadillac led with:
They had a forerunner of ABS available in 1970.
Air bags were available in the mid-'70s. So was EFI.
They did tilt wheels in the '60s.
I believe they were also the first GM division to add OnStar to their cars.
The trend at GM is to move things down throughout the line - look for Night Vision to be on Buick and the high-end GM trucks (Suburban and Tahoe) in another year or two, then for it to be on Olds and Pontiac, followed by Chevy and (maybe) Saturn in the middle of the next decade.
Night Vision is one of those things that screams "why didn't anybody think of it sooner". From what I've seen of it, it doesn't get in the way, and just spotlights things that are out of your headlights' range. I could use that when I'm staying on the Vineyard - the damn deer are everywhere on the island.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Is this the same Cadilliac that can tell, using it's OnStar system and Satillites, EXACTLY where your Cadilliac is, as well as when and where you get in a wreck (air bag deployment)?
I don't care WHAT they put on their cars. I'm not buying from a company whose disgruntled, underpaid workers can monitor my whereabouts.
SocMeth
Thanks for the info.
Too bad about the IR absorption. I might have bought one if it worked well in fog. Dust and smoke just aren't big enough problems here in Oregon to be worth the cash....
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Near-infrared is much like regular light, but just a bit longer wavelength than visible red light and doesn't have much to do with the temperature of an object. It is used by remote controls, computer IR ports, etc. and can be imaged with Sony Nightvision cameras. Many tranditional camcorders, digital cameras, quickcams and other CCDs can pick it up to a lesser extent (remote controls can be seen to blink for example). Some digital cameras can photograph in near-infrared with the addition of a filter and conventional cameras with special film. The Nightvision trick worked because many materials that appear opaque to us are transparent to varying degrees to near-infrared light. The sun is used as a big fat IR light source, and the visible light which would normally obscure the image is blocked out by a special filter, sold separately :-). I haven't had a chance to check out one of those cameras, but I suspect that they have some small source of IR light (IR LEDs probably) for actually nighttime photography.
Far-infrared or thermal imaging reqires more expensive equipment and actually picks up on warm objects. You can see that sort of thing on Cops when they're chasing the baddies around with the helicopter at night. I suspect that's what this uses because near-infrared would pick up on everything and would require an infrared light source that extends farther than your headlights. If it does use far-IR then I don't think you could pull off the same trick as with the Sony Nightvision cameras. If it uses near-IR, I still doubt you could pull it off because it would only work in the day, during which the feature is probably not useable. Either way, it would be MUCH cheaper for your average pervert to get a Sony Nightvision camcorder than a Cadillac (I'm sure somebody's found a way to get around the modifications Sony's made to "fix" it.)
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
Oh, and you disable important safety features like daytime running lights (which is intended for the safety of OTHER people on the road)? I hope some day someone sues the pants off you.
Would it interfere with our stereoscopic distance perception?
O new art woe are we.
Most accidents almost certainly do not happen at night because most driving occurs during the day. I'm not sure if the percentage of accidents per number of
drivers on the road goes up.
That's exactly what I was trying to say!!
Therefore, I think this is an unnecessary technology, that will certainly NOT improve my driving experience. *ah* someone understands...
Insert mind here.
...teenagers will be taking FLIR cameras instead.
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
Funny, but sadly, you can't leave your headlights off with newer cars. There's a thing known as "daytime running lights" that the major automakers are making standard on almost all vehicles. My '99 Chevrolet Prizm has DRLs, and they're all right (though I would never use them at night). So, with a newer car, it's harder to leave the lights off.
Good idea, though...
awkwardone
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
People often assume that seeing infrared means seeing heat, and that's just not true. That's the difference between ``near infrared'' and ``far infrared.'' Things that are hot throw off far infrared in the same way that things that are really hot throw off visible light.
The Sony Nightshot camera, and all of those nightvision scopes you can buy on the web for from $200-$3000 are near-IR, which means that they can only see objects that are illuminated by an IR light source, like an IR spotlight, or (sometimes) the ambient IR from the night sky.
Thermal imaging hardware is insanely expensive. I understand that this is because it requires tremendously low temperatures, e.g., liquid nitrogen cooling. The explanation I heard is that, analagous to the way the inside of a camera must be completely dark to pick up light without interference, the inside of a heat imager must be completely cold to pick up heat without interference.
Anyway, I'm not an expert on how thermal imaging works, but I do know that it's not available in any kind of ``cool toy'' price range, so I seriously doubt that's what this car has. It's far more likely that the car has a near-IR CCD camera, and IR headlights.
BTW, almost all CCDs see slightly into near-IR beyond the range of human vision: if you look through any modern camcorder and press the button on a remote control, you'll be able to see the beam.
The police already use helicopters with IR to detect indoor growing operations, even in medium size cities like Indianapolis. It's the grow lights that draw thier attention. I went to a police auction and forbade my roomate from buying $2000 lights for $1 because they're just so easy to spot from the air. Also, I think the cops were going to follow the buyer home.
-Barry
Suppose you get into an accident on the highway at night in your high-tech automobile. Imagine the insurance adjuster claims visibility was a factor, would you get penalized for having this high-tech device. Technology is often demonized in court.
and her 'poon
Uh, wasn't she only 15 or thereabouts?
Even if she was hot, you'd have to watch out for the Dentata...
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"Obey"
"Reproduce"
"Consume"
This could be a great tool for those of us who have to make loooong drives at night for work or other reasons. It would be a great help to long distance truckers, I would imagine, allowing them to extend their driving further into the night with somewhat less worries about their vision.
But how well does it work? Will it really provide significantly more safety? Will it even be viable? When will it become mainstream? How much extra will we have to pay? What might be side effects? So many questions have to be considered before we all jump on the bandwagon. Just my $0.02.
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Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
Actually the Cadillac uses thermal infrared at 8-14 microns thus seeing the "heat" of objects. Infrared spotlights and image intensifiers use the near infrared (between 1 and 2 microns). The spotlight wouldn't be seen.
Wow! I crap on the US as much as anybody, but this is ridiculous.
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
This looks pretty cool, but I couldn't find any actual pictures of the system at work on their site. Does anyone know where there are any?
Search first, ask questions later.
It is a small opaque square. Saw this at the car show in Seattle a week or so ago. It looks pretty neet...but it's just a small square down along the bottom, so you can just keep an eye on it as you drive.
Finally I can ignore those annoying people who drive with their high-beams on or use colored headlights. As a sidenote - this will also enable you to see people walking down the side of the road - a definite safety plus. I rather wonder though what it looks like - engines generate lots of heat, plus in the winter you have all that heat energy in the passenger compartment - wouldn't that make it rather difficult to distinguish between two cars driving next to each other in different lanes? Hmmm, well... time will tell. Either way that's pretty cool. I wonder how long until it makes it into the hands of the less fortunate souls that don't have a spare 100k lying around to get a car...
yeah, but there is a bit of an alignment problem, because a system like that must either 1)assume your eye posistion, or 2)be able to dynamically determine it and adjust the image accordingly. Otherwise you will be shifting the image you are relyng on to navagate your can with respect to reality. It could get confusing.
So there a lots of drawback to using IR, roadsigns for instance. They could use a light amplification system which only amplifies areas beneath a certain threshold. Thatway they would be blind after the first streetlight.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
CHeck out their little demo and you'll see how visible live and/or hot things are; it's impressive. But the street sign shows up as black. Does this mean that street signs will be unreadable? I imagine there's some way around it other than switching off your scope, or Cadillac are just begging for lawsuits.
Might I suggest you try slowing down?
That's great for drive-by shootings. I gotta have one.
Two: there is no pressing need for enhanced "night vision" in cars. I mean, if you can't handle night driving, get a hotel room.
Peace out. Warm fuzzies. Happy Happy. Satan.
I am not a lawyer.
I wonder how long before someone abuses this peice of nightvision (convert it to x ray vision), like they did with the Sony Handycam, looking through peoples clothes as you drive could be dangerous.
So, how long until someone puts a targeting recticle on theirs? ( you know, sorta like the big hood ornaments that Mercedes have :)
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
hrm... any way you can get it so its not a 4x4 square?? id prefer it to be mounted on the dash also.. but does anyone know how it gets aroudnt he headlists of oncomign traffic making you blind ?? maybe some sort of filtering?
The answer is yes, it does. I work for a company who was contracted to set up a demo for it at the Frankfurt motor show. I'm not breaking any company secrets by saying how it works, I don't think - after all, it's already been shown to the public There's 2 main setups being developed. There's one (I believe the Caddy one) which has a sensor mounted in the grille and a separate display on the dash to see what's going on, so you'd look from the road to the display and back again. It's quite low resolution. The other setup (which my company did the demo for) is a bit more fancy. There's an IR 'headlight', and a receiver in the roof. Then there's a drop-down screen comes down in front of the driver ("Use the Force, Luke" :) and the IR image is displayed on this. The fancy part is that the IR image is always lined up with the real world you can see through the windshield, so in about a 6"x6" square you get this night-vision extra to your normal vision. For Snow Crash fans, YT's Knight Visions were an 'instead of', rather than 'as well as' for vision. This is more like Hiro's 'gargoyle mode', in that the IR image adds to your existing view of the road to sharpen what you can see and extend your range of vision. One standard question: ppl ask "What happens when there's 2 of these cars coming towards each other? Won't the IR headlight of one dazzle the other?" One solution to this is polarizing the headlights and camera at 45 degrees, so the light from the other car coming towards you is 90 degrees out of phase with your light and will be cut out by the polarizing filter.
I remember speeding down hilly curvy PA routes and turning my lights off just for the rush. I'm sure I would've hacked the HUD just to impress my friends in their primitive vehicles.
Last year at the New York International Car Show at Javits Cadillac had a booth where you could demo this. It was quite strange to say the least.... but I could see in 2 or 3 minutes that it would work good once you're used to it.
If you go here I've got a picture called "Night Vision Evoq" that has a good picture of where the night vision scope reads from on the car. There are also other pictures from the car show.
.
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
Yeah, they hired some good graphic artists, woohoo. (actually, the oncoming car seems to slow down as it gets closer to you...)
I think it's going to cause more accidents than it prevents
Perhaps we should instead have something that goes "Warning! Warning! Crash imminent!" in a robotic voice while red lights flash...
---------
To hell with you, I never liked you, you are no friend of mine...
If you're on a loose surface (such as sand or gravel) then a locked wheel will build up a wedge of material in front of it, which helps slow it down. ABS stops this happening, which is mostly why rally cars don't get fitted with ABS even though it's legal.
The train company are being truly nasty on this one and I'd do my best to publicise what they've done if I were you, but they are right that ABS (marginally) increases stopping distances on loose surfaces. It's so much better on any solid surface that it's still something you should look out for on your next car, though.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
This actually occurred to me last time I had moderator points and I'd be delighted if the moderation guidelines could be changed to take account of this.
What I decided was the fairest solution was for me to view in nested mode so I could follow the threads easily, but with it set to newest first. That way I wasn't seeing all that much taht had already been moderated, but saw plenty of good stuff.
Alternatively, view at lowest score first. That way you'll find the AC comments which start off at 0 (something else I'd change) and can moderate them sensibly.
I accept I did this at first, but moderating while viewing at highest score first just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Marketing claims that the rear colision thing is to avoid running into loved ones and other things in your driveway. I always wondered how long it would be before there was a court case because a lazy induhvidual backed up without looking relying completely on the back up sensor.
I like the idea of an IR scope for night driving. However, I am concerned that some lazy goon will use it exclusively and not as an enhancement to normal light and night time driving. Stupid people amaze me.
This thing is pretty cool, but does anyone else get the impression that their car would turn into a deadly GameBoy? (Hey look, it's all black and white.. this isn't real life! :)
Nice, but I wish car companies would focus more on the types of HUDs that fighter planes sport. My speedometer on an old car that I had broke for several months, and during that time, I was actually a safer driver due to the fact that I could keep my eyes on the road at all times. If I just had an HUD that would reflect my speedometer, tach, gas, etc... I'd be in heaven.
Not only would you look silly, but you would have no peripheral vision; like being really tanked.
(yes, I probably need to come back to earth, but shooting a turkey and cooking it all at the same time sounds kinda cool...)
this same comment was attached to the +5 it mocks... and it got scored a 2, and this copy of it is troll? hmmm... insightful moderation
Yes, Offtopic, but....
:-)
The car programs on US television reported on this feature weeks ago, complete with a demo. It is curious that it took so long to make it on to Slashdot, and given the non-timeliness, that it was posted here. Slashdot is usually up with the hunt, with news breaking by the hour these days.
Is this indicative that all (other) Slashdot readers are uberGeeks who drive clapped out Accords, and care not for technology that doesn't include an x86 chip? I'd like to think not!
I've often thought that if a car were able to drive itself ("computer, take me to grand central station". "Doh! I was speaking into the mouse"), that even if it were safer than the average human... The company who sells the car would get sued for every wreck the cars were involved in.
If people have a chance to move the blame to someone/something else, they will, and few people are going to defend the machine, especially if a company is behind it.
Not that I'm an expert in military technology, but It i'm sure that they would have a low-pass filter incorporated into the design. Basically, if the signal for some part is *OVER* a certain strength, it doesn't get passed through.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
The signal processing done by the system would make anything hotter than ambient air temperature appear hot.
.1 degree C. ( of course that is my guessing I dont know the exact specs of the system, just a little bit about the IR array used)
Remember, the human body radiates at 98F. It would still appear hotter at any night on almost any night in the USA. The sensitivity of the system would be very good. In a real system it should be able to distinguish a temperature differential of
And I want to see it packed into a helmet for us motorcyclists with all the statistical data (speed, surface temp - for those near freezing days - relative friction coefficient of the surface your travelling on?, etc.) that could be usefull.
The reason car manufacurers have been sued is because the about 50% of people in the US don't wear seatbelts. This caused the car manufacturers to increase the volocity that the air bags are deployed. The long and short is that the safty test were done on people of average hight and so short drivers tend to get killed by the air bags. In Canada (about 98% of people use seatbelts) the higher volocity air bags are now baned.
Sorry stats are about 5 years old, and natinal
I've seen the Cadillac Nightvision. Very nice toy, I'd say. Check out the link: Raytheon's IR Site
Raytheon makes the NightDriver stuff for Cadillac.
No need for calibration, as it doesn't cover the full windshield. It's just kind of a little window. I don't personally think it would be that *wonderful* of a thing, but I could be wrong.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
This is just the thing for those high-speed late-night highway trips. A police car that's been sitting in the median with the lights off and the engine idling ought to shine pretty brightly on the IR display.
Considering that police departments are moving away from radar and more toward (infrared) lasers, this technology could be more useful than a radar detector at night. I wonder if it picks up the wavelengths used by lidar guns?
>I like the idea of an IR scope for night driving. However, I am concerned that some lazy goon will use it exclusively and not as an enhancement to normal light and night time driving. Stupid people amaze me. Yeah, like that guy who thinks that headlights can give you better vision than night vision. Military pilots can LAND using night vision. I believe the only problem is viewing signs.
WHOZ MY BITCH, JOO ARE ESP IF JOO IZ A KARMA HOEBAG
... to rig an extra switch between the main light control and the actual headlights?
Hint: Simplicity itself.
Seems as though prople here have a little too much emphesis on SOFTWARE hacking. Don't, for a minute, think that some simple electrical skill goes a long way as well.
john
Imagine all the people...
I guess it makes it easier to keep up with yo' hoes.
;)
I heard of someone in Canada who was surprised by the cops knocking on the door. Seems he was growing not a few plants in the attic (which was like in most houses, uninsulated) with the odd UV lamp or three to keep them cozy (hash plants only produce the goodies if made to "sweat").
Their detection system? His was the only house for miles with a clean, black roof - all the rest had a foot thick layer of frozen snow.
I can't wait until they start producing general purpose HUDs for cars. Imagine the possibilities! HUD skins... plugin in a Star Wars skin, and it turns the other cars into pod racers! Use the BattleTank plugin, and get classic 3d wireframe cars! Use the web browser and get in a life threatening accident! Fun.
Josh
Gah. I actually taped that when it came out, being a fan of the original show. I was like, 16 when the 2000 movie came out? Gotta find that tape somewhere...
Now, looking back, I find it simply awful. What they called what you're talking about was 'Virtual Reality Mode.' This tech on the Caddy looks much better.
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
You're not an expert, there is a protection circuit to prevent overload, when activated by something like vehicle headlights, the amplification system is deactivated, and no image is rendered. Former custodian of Naval night vision equipment.
The average pig idling behind a bridge embankment throws off a certain amount of heat, but you still might not notice him. However, that mug of hot coffee will certainly be visible in the infrared system, and speeders will slow down before he can tag 'em. Damn! Gotta leave the java at home. Where'd I put my radar jammer, anyway?
:)
I have a lot of respect for police officers when they're being useful. Protecting me from my own gas pedal is not useful.
Useless prank: Use a torch to "heat-paint" obscene things on bridge embankments, etc. Totally invisible to the unaided eye, but Olds drivers will do a quick double-take as the concrete wall tells them things. Any northerners familiar with "heat cord" that you use to prevent ice dams on your roof in winter? Tape the stuff into patterns and find a source of power.
Hi,
My parents developed FLIR (night vision) for the military/aerospace in the 70s and 80s; I heard a few stories when I was growing up. One of which, is that during the vietnam war (I believe) the military was experimenting with some active night vision technology for foot soldiers. The way it worked was that they would have a soldier stand up with an infrared lamp flashlight type deal and illuminate in front, and the soldiers in his company would wear special filter glasses. Anyhow, it turns out that asian's can see just slightly more into the infrared than caucasians, such that lamp was visible to some of them. The developers never realized this and the soldiers discovered the hard way. It didn't take them long to realize that it was equivalent to wearing a big flashing sign saying "shoot me". Eventually the soldier's refused to carry the lamp, it took the brass/developers a couple weeks to find out though.
There was a humungous pile-up near Winsor, Ontario, a while back, along a notoriously foggy stretch of road.
I'm sure one of the main causes of both of these massive accidents is that people are too fscking STUPID/impatient to slow down when the weather is bad. I mean, come on, if the fog is thick enough to block your vision that badly, you're gonna be able to see the fog bank itself quite a ways away.
Even then, you should just slow the hell down. You have to ask yourself: is getting home/to work/to the game 5 minutes earlier worth your life? If it is, you better not drive anywhere near me. I'll be laughing at you while you're in the ditch
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
About a year ago, my mother-in-law was sued for damaging a train. The train signal was broken, and several people had already reported it to the local police. She saw the train too late to stop before the train hit the front of her car and ripped-off everything from just behind the front wheels to the front bumper. She escaped with only a few bruises. The state traffic investigator (uhh, can't remember the office's name now) said that if she hadn't been driving such a piece of junk ('99 Accord) she would have gotten hurt much worse because the car wouldn't have been torn as easily and the train would have probably dragged the car for several hundred feet before it stopped. CSX sued her for damage to the train and for penalties they paid for late deliveries. Their claim was that if she hadn't had anti-lock brakes on her Honda, then it would have stopped faster on the sandy road. Several local cops testified that they agreed that anti-lock brakes made cars unsafe on wet or low-traction roads (dirt, sand, gravel, rough, etc.) and that she was at fault for knowingly driving a car with unsafe brakes. She lost. The jury beleived the local pigs rather than the expert her lawyer hired from the Saturn plant about an hour drive from here. Before the case was tried, her lawyer warned that most people hate (yes, hate, not simply dislike) technology on cars because they believe they don't need it, but they are forced to pay for it anyway. Safer in reality != safer liablity in court.
for those of us that are tech savy, videofile, younger people. It will be usefull on foggy roads, if there is wildlife ahead or drunken students (did I repeat myself?). However, it will be less usefull on busy roads and in the city where there are more things to concentrate on.
The problem is with the demographics of the buyer of these models, if you get my drift. Some of these folks may get confused by the double representation, slow right down (even more!) and perhaps causing more accidents.
On another note, I've read some comments here that need clarification. With thermal/ir you can acctually see pretty good, depending on the quality of the system. I am ex-military and I have used pretty much the range of whats out there. The older models are pretty crappy, the new ones are very good. But you still can't see through a concrete wall in any sort of real-time form. The metal on most cars will difuse the heat from the passengers unless they are right against the metal.
As for driving without headllights, it will be pretty dangerous unless you add an ir lamp/source; then, you will illuminate all the objects in front and be able to see them.
A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake
Did anyone else notice that you can't read the sign in the simulator. Great. I can see people/cars/deer, but I can't read signs warning "Slow to 20, dangerous curves ahead".
-no broken link
When I was in the Navy, we used night vision goggles to see things on the flight deck at night during periods when lights were prohibited. If someone nearby lit a match, it was blinding, and all you could see was a green haze.
Wouldn't this sort of thing be a problem here too?
** Black holes are where God divided by zero **
"This system one a Grand..." 'one' is not a verb. Your tragic missuse of "one" when you meant "won" has TAINTED Slashdot. Your comment is therefore REJECTED.
Normal windshields don't reflect sufficient light to work well, so you stick a mostly transparent film with tiny embedded reflective particles onto the inside of the windshield. This is done on most cars with HUDs, just check it out. There's nothing special about the windshield itself. The problem is the distortion introduced by the curvature of the glass. With conventional HUDs in cars that's not a problem since the display only consists of simple large digits which are recognizable anyway. With entire images it might become annoying. One possible solution is to compensate for the curvature in software, by distorting the displayed image such that the net effect is a reasonably even image. That is done in many systems, including the Hubble space telescope, 3D camera systems, etc. It might be a little tricky to do in real time, but not at all impossible.
The advantage of this approach is that you could sell an off-the-shelf system. Simply stick the reflector film on the windshield, stick the LCD on the dash, select the car make and model in the software setup (which sets the correct distortion compensation parameters for your windshield curvature), and you're ready to go. All for $499 at Pep Boys. Yeah right!
What am I missing? Where do you meta moderate? I can't find any links and doing a search only gives me the article that proposed it.
Thanks.
well, suppose your at fault. if you didnt have the night vision goo on, that would put you in a bit of a pickle (mmmmmm... pickles)
~~~ They call me Little John, but don't let the name fool you...in real life I'm very big.
Nope, those are halogen headlights. Great if you're the driver, because they're a lot brighter. Not so great if you're coming at the person.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I wanna voice activated stealth mode to go along with my night vision / No headlights HUD. All I say is "Stealth Mode, Kit!" and suddenly my headlights turn off, and the camera operator switches off the gain on the microphone. Silent even on gravel!! Of course, I'd have to get a "whoosh-whoosh" sound superimposed... and a jump feature installed in my suspension system.......
I can't speak for Ontario's weather, but in the mountains in the northeastern U.S. (and presumably any mountainous area) you can drive into 20' visibility fog in a matter of seconds. Sometimes the fog will come rolling across perpendicular to the highway which affords no chance of "seeing ahead." I believe the recent accident in PA that resulted in two deaths was that kind of situation: a fog bank rolled in very quickly, at which point the (professional) bus drivers tried to pull off the road and stop, but the fog was so dense, so quickly, that the buses collided with each other.
the mag poon, ya freak! Tho the other meaning is tempting to say the least.. rrrwarrrr :)
i don't advocate violence in any sense of the word. But having a night vision equipped car would be good for drive by shootings. Because the intended victim will have less warning as to your approach if you approach he/she with your headlights off.
It's just a sheet of metal or fibreglass. It doesn't generate heat, and its temperature probably follows that of its surroundings closely. Thus you wouldn't expect it to generate a lot of infra-red energy compared to some other objects, such as living things.
The idea is not to replace the driver's view of the road but rather to augment it. Road signs are already coated with a material which makes them reflect headlights, so they are highly visible already without any help.
The new Corvettes have a HUD that includes speed/tach/dummy lights/etc. It even has a shift light. Supposedly it's adjustable for position, and you can also remove/add various parts of it. (ie: Tachometer only.. no speedometer). It still has a regular set of gauges on the dash, and you can turn the hud on/off as you please. Now if only they'd have put that on the Camaros... Ahh well. :)
Fujitsu Radar http://www.fujitsu-ten.co.jp/release/1999/0517e.ht ml Hedley
Does anyone know where to find any type of HUD equipment (windshield display)??
I would guess that aftermarket sources will eventually provide HUD technology for existing vehicles. In the meantime, it would be nice if we could safely plug our dashboard, night vision, or gps into a HUD. While GPS can sure be a timesaver for frequent travelers, looking away at a GPS flat panel is far from safe in my opinion. If implemented correctly, a GPS heads up display would be much easier / safer to use.
Actually, my H4 lights are MUCH easier on the eyes of oncoming drivers than standard lights because they only put out light from the lower half of the bulb. They shine only from the ground to straight ahead. I have yet to have someone flash their brights at me for blinding them, even running 90 watt low beams! When coming up behind someone, the light doesn't even reach higher than their trunklid or tail lights, depending on the car. I guess it is one of those things that you have to see for yourself - hehehe :)
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
Speaking of Cadillacs, I have a 2000 Seville with the navigation system. It seems to have a high Hack Value, but I can't find any information anywhere. Anyone else have one of these? Maybe you know how to access the audio/video in jacks in the glovebox?
99.99% of the time in a car-train collision, it's directly the fault of the driver of the car. It's not like the train can swerve to hit the car. If the AC's mommy hadn't been in such a hurry to make it across the RR crossing before the train got to it, she wouldn't have gotten hit.
remember when racing a train, even if you tie, you lose.
Oh no! Now you can't even hide your *ahem* private endeavours behind the glare of your headlights. Thermal images, really! Reminds me of "R" in TWINE - must be a Y2K glitch!
Sreeram.
notice where it says "not an acutal simulation" down at the bottom of the 'example' box on the web page?
the image is on the bottom of the windshield, and isn't even as wide as the steering wheel...
I've seen it in the DeVilles, have you?
Cool device! I'd love to have a car with that thing. Even if it's just for the fun of it. Perhaps now people will stop swearing at drivers who shine their headlights into your face? :-)
Still, a device is just a device... it's meant to help conscientious drivers drive better. But I doubt it would make that much a difference for careless drivers. Nothing can replace human responsibility, IMHO.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
hopefully it doesn't run windows, could you imagine hitting a bump and your whole windscreen turns blue... JasonG
Please moderate this offensive post downward. It makes slashdot look bad.
92 olds cutlass supreme was one that had a HUD.
http://www.cadillac.com/te ch/nightmoves/see/shocked.html
and enjoy!
Great idea! I wonder how long 'till someone hacks a way to sent VGA to the HUD-portion of Cadillac's device. I've often thought a small HUD at the bottom of my windsheild would be handy.
Someone should call their local Cadillac dealer's parts department to see what the HUD module costs. Maybe it can be made to work in other cars.
Is the rear parking assist. I like this option, tho night vision will be cool once I can get it on my van.
>Stupid people amaze me. Yeah, like that guy who thinks that headlights can give you better vision than night vision. Military pilots can LAND using night vision. I believe the only problem is viewing signs.
---
Military pilots have an entire array of informative widgits other than nightvission for use when landing.. not to mention the IR rig they have is ( I'm betting, send me a URL w/ proof if I'm wrong ) far more advanced than that of any publicly available car. ( barring special after market enchancements, sure anyone w/ a few mill can get there hands on a high grade IR setup and rig it to their car ). And you have to be liscensed and trained to fly by instrumentation before you can legaly do so.
I as well fear the person who assumes they can drive with out paying attention to the "real" world.
-Rogan C.
uin: 4e8343
Agree on a standard whereby all IR headlights are polarized horizontally, and windshields polarized vertically. The reflected IR light will become depolarized, but direct IR light will still be polarized, and be filtered by oncoming cars' windshields.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I got to play with what must have been the precursor to the Cadillac technology a few years ago, and it was QUITE IMPRESSIVE. At the time, I was working with the world's largest oil producer on an emergency oil spill response network. I participated in a drill where they tried several new things, including the "instant global network" I built for them, some new voice comms technology, and also a demo of the GM Hughes thermal vision system as it would be sold to law enforcement officials. (This could enhance security of the response site, since the enviros have been known to sabotage spill response operations - go figure...)
It was a dreary winter day in Houston, about 50 degrees and misting - we were at the far end of the parking lot and the drizzle was producing a notable amount of fuzz when looking toward the main building. The GM guy fired up the vision system, and on a little 6" black and white monitor, we suddenly saw a bright white spot moving across the parking lot, attached to the right arm of a walking figure barely visible by eye through the mist. The GM guy grinned from ear to ear - what we were seeing was the heat signature of one of the project guys, and more importantly, his cup of hot coffee, which produced a white spot about a foot and a half in diameter!
I got a fair amount of time in playing with the thing that day - it became quite obvious that there would be no effective way of hiding from such a system. Exposed skin stood out clearly from the environment at distances approaching 1/4 mile, and clothing scarcely attenuated the response, even leather jackets and such, which seemed to be about the most opaque. All this from a system which only cost about $6000 back then (c. 1995).
All in all I came away quite impressed, and wouldn't want to have to sneak past someone equipped with that technology. I don't know if the system I saw was any better because it was intended for law enforcement, or if the Cadillac system is now as good, but it impressed the heck outta me, and I'm not easily impressed by technology.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Coincidentally, I recently drove a Pontiac Grand Prix with a HUD. It had a rocker switch to adjust the display up or down for drivers of different heights; I think I saw the same thing on the Cadillac page.
The Grand Prix' HUD just reflected a simple LED display onto the bottom of the windshield; it constantly displayed your speed (in digits, nothing graphical). When you adjusted the radio, you also got the frequency/preset-number which went away after a few seconds. I was surprised, I didn't know anyone was making production cars with HUDs, but this was a '97 model year.
I suppose there's a risk that too much data on your windsheild could distract you from the road and compromise safety. On the other hand, on my existing car (not the Grand Prix), between the stereo system, temperature control systems and the instrument panel guages, my eyes already have plenty to potentially distract them. Yet I don't feel it's a safety issue. Just because something is there to be looked at doesn't mean I will look at it long enough to miss something happening in front of me. Sometimes I even drive with a small GPS unit on the dashboard, and its just not a problem. I can even push one or two of its tiny buttons and feel safe; as long as I know the buttons by feel and can keep my eyes on the road. (On the other hand, if I need to do something on the GPS which requires me to push a sequence of buttons, then I pull over first.)
Of course, the big advantage of a HUD is that it allows you to keep your eyes, if not on the road then at least pointed at the road. So you aught to be able to put a lot more data in a HUD than you would want on a dash-mounted display.
Are you sure about that? I have been using halogens for years and the light doesn't look like that. These things look more like mercury vapor. Distictly blue and look suspiciously monochromatic.
I'd rather have Y.T.'s Knight Visions, myself...
and her 'poon, and the board, and the rest of the RadiKS gear.. hehe
What state was this? Remind me never to go there...
BTW, those local "pigs" are moronic...I can't see how NOT having ABS would help...
Unfortunately, this event could only reinforce anti-american stereotypes.
Finally I can ignore those annoying people who drive with their high-beams on or use colored headlights.
This system doesn't replace your windshield at all. Those people will still be able to blind you with their headlights. This thing only shows up in a small box below your normal eye level on your windshield.
Basically if everyone is going at the same speed they won't hit each other. Whether fast or slow.
A lot of problems happen if people don't consider the rest of the herd:
Examples:
Filtering in too slow.
Speeding and trying to do a slalom amongst slower vehicles.
Sloppy driving - not sticking to your lane, or going for the wrong lane.
If you want to go fast, make sure you don't go so much faster than the rest. Then if you hit someone it's not as big a problem.
Always keep in mind there's bound to be an idiot on the road who'll cause problems, and that sometimes that idiot is you (nobody's perfect). So a bit of patience and understanding helps.
Is it too damn hard to read the fucking article?
Can't we look at the picture and see what it looks like?
But no... we have to gibber on about how you could paint a Caddy black and put lasers on it and foil cops who have running engines. BLAH BLAH BLAH.
READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE POSTING. YOUR IGNORANCE DOESN'T HELP ANYONE.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
Speed Racer, here I come!
have your lights on yes.. but have bulbs in your lights? :)
I think they're called High Intensity Discharge.
Keep in mind that by bluish, I don't mean blue. The light looks white, but with a barely noticable bluish tinge to it. There's really no way to accurately describe it without being able to show it to someone. (To see what I mean, try to describe the color green (or any color or that matter) to someone without referring to anything that actually is green, and see if they can understand what you're talking about.)
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
>Military pilots have an entire array of informative widgits other than nightvission for use when landing...
I actually know a little about this... someone I know very well does DOD acquisitions, and in the last few years bought FLIR (forward looking infra-red) pods. They ran a little over $2k....
Another thing to consider, airfields and carrier decks have lights on them, something country roads usually don't.
As for the people relying on the system too much, give people little transponders, and the wrist-thingies beep when a certified moron (transmitted by car microwave dish) is approaching. If the car detects an entity without a transponder, it must be an animal. That's where the grille-mounted gauss rifle comes into play...
"Roadkill" would never be the same
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
I have actually driven (on a gravel road) with one of those military night-vision goggles. No, looking at a headlight does not fry your retinas since there is an overload. The problem is a) You have monocular vision, which sort of screws up your sense of depth b) Peripheral vision goes down the toilet c) It is difficult to distinguish between rocks and holes (or between curbs on a road and so on). I suspect some of the problems might go away when you have a binocular device, and if you are driving a tank the whole little rock-hole thing is not really relevant. I was driving in a normal car one someone's ranch (he uses the scope for hunting), and I did not find it very amusing. After a short while my buddy took over and he was driving the car while I had the scope on, and we went into tow, which was quite cool, really. Judging by the looks I got from innocent bystanders I suspect I must have looked like a dork. But it was cool anyway :)
Why not just buy cheaper, yet far superior, surplus military night vision gear?
I saw a commercial for this earlier last week - it looked like a small part of the windshield was changed to a HUD, so the rest was just normal vision. I think what this does is provide night-vision ahead of you, but allows regular vision to the sides and above.
The only problem I see is that parked cars (i.e. turned off) would be invisible by this, so you're sort of screwed in that respect. =)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Finally something to verify my visions of Unidentified Flying hemOs! No longer will they mock me!
(cackle cackle)
On the serious side though, I'm wondering what you could do with the HUD... if it was software modifiable you could turn it into a targeting system a la Terminator. Or perhaps play a spirited game of Pong with the passenger. Hmm. I think I'm going to take a walk down to the Cadillac dealership.
cdensch don't do signatures
I wonder if this will see hot engines through fog and help prevent chain collisions like the recent one outside of Denver?
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
I'd like to see more features on my HUD. Current speed, direction, GPS coordinates, webserver statistics, fuel supply, days until y2k (BTW who compressed 'Year 2000' into 'Y2K'... isn't that kinda what got us into the problem?), maybe information on other objects within view such as the speed of the car in front of me superimposed above its image along with its current direction vector.
Woohoo, my infrared spotlight finally has a use. Watch the yuppies swerve all over the road.
...'bout time something like this was done, although apparently it's only mounted on the front grill (perhaps you're backing up during a parallel park, and don't want to run over a neighbor's cat... no coverage there).
If they could combine this with a ring of active sonar sensors, for revealing cold-but-still-there objects like fallen trees and telephone polls, it'd be even better.
Anybody know if it'd be more practical to put it all in a pair of goggles plugged into the dash? Dunno the resolution that we can get thusly 'round now, and there'd be the issue that you now also need to feed in normal video so folks can still read the signs...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I rather wonder though what it looks like - engines generate lots of heat, plus in the winter you have all
that heat energy in the passenger compartment - wouldn't that make it rather difficult to distinguish between two cars driving next to each other in different lanes?
Hmmm, well... time will tell
I wonder the same things. But I also wonder how this is going to help if it's mounted on the dash. I guess it's not that far to glance down just an inch, esp. since you're still looking at the road, but.. most people being used to looking at things through their own eyes and with "visible" light (not IR light), I'm going to also think it's going to be a bit of a hassle not only to use but to, first, get used to. I don't quite see how it's going to help _that_ much. We've been living w/out it thus far, and I don't think that the majority of accidents happen at night/because of driving at night. People just need to pay attention to what they're doing, use their headlights when needed, and stay off the road if they're unable to drive safely.
Insert mind here.
I worked with M60-A3 tanks about 11 years ago. They used Termal imaging for the targeting. You could see a rabit at 500 + meters. It could cut thru fog and dust. ( These sights were a major factors to the sucess of the tank battles In Iraq by Nato Forces.) You could even look at a woman and tell if she was on her period. If this is well designed it could greatly enhance driver safety. Then again how long will it be before some people stop using their headlights.
I've noticed many people saying that it will be hard to see some things with this system. What they don't seem to be thinking about is the fact that a HUD is overlayed above normal vision: you can still see anything you could before, just with an extra transparent layer in between.
Also note the "not an actual representation" text on the page with comparisons of low/high beams to the night vision.
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END OF LINE
Slashdot readers seem to be missing the poing of this device. It is not to circumvent being blinded by drivers with their brights on but rather it is to allow a driver to see past the range of his headlights, and even his brights, in case there are people or wildlife in the road ahead.
The whole idea is for an early warning system to help prevent collisions with road side tire changers, deer, moose, et cetra.
The small box at the base of the windshiled is not susposed to be your main focus at any point while you are driving.
This system one a Grand Award from Popular Science for The Best of What's New.
A great idea that is well implemeted only wish I could afford it. Perhaps their will be a third party that begins to install the system on any car sometime in the near future.
CHeck out their little demo and you'll see how visible live and/or hot
things are; it's impressive. But the street sign shows up as black.
Does this mean that street signs will be unreadable?
Of course not, just put turn on your IR headlamps (you DO have IR headlamps?) and the signs will be bright as daylight. And every thing else within range. Great for those night-time stake-outs and drive-bys.
Remember the hi-tech car with Jackie Chan in it from Cannonball Run? Well, it is almost reality now with this nite-drive feature as an option.
Of course having this didn't always serve Jackie and his co-driver to full advantage...
You can be sure that police would have something like this to track phantom speeders with their lights off as well.
YMMV NPI
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/
http://fudge.org
I've never used a HUD, so I have been wondering if there is any calibration required. Does it line up correctly no matter if you are 5' tall or 6'8" ?
Then we could use the night vision for what it was originally intended...
...targeting :)
Brings new fun to "Dear Hunting" . .
Now if they would only put them on tanks . .er ummm I mean SUVs. :)
I did a quick search on altavista and found this article with one picture and here is that piture a little bigger.
Just wait until you can get some generic system that can be retrofitted into any car. It looks like it should be doable. The system components, as described, are a camera mounted behind the car's grille, some processor that can be put anywhere, and some method of projection from the dashboard. It's just a matter of availability of the parts.
Sure nightvision is a great thing, but it's just a small step in innovation. The next generation will need auto target tracking, friend or foe detection, and voice activated autofire.
They could even make them in different colors so they could sell to the Bloods *AND* the Crips.
:)
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I have dual feelings about this technology. On 1 hand, I do think that the Idea of it all is great. It is amazing the technologies that they can work with now.
But on the second hand, I see it as yet another distraction in the car for the driver. Sure it will offer the driver better long range vision at night, but it is also 1 more thing for the driver to concetrate on. Personally I found that the digital gas and speed gauges were distracting enough...they are two "busy". I can just imagine how busy the display would be. I also think that drivers would get too dependant on the IR view.
Not to mention that you would have all of the inherent problems with real infrared vision. This thing, it would seem, ignores engine heat from your car, environmental heat from whatever you happen to be near, including the _road_ (in high-heat areas or in summer, that asphalt gets pretty hot), and various other things that would serve as distractions and/or blinding lights in an infrared-only vision toy. How it knows what to ignore I don't know. Then again, looking at it on Cadillac's site, I'm not surprised it looks so good, we're dealing with a BIG corp here, folks! Marketing City.
:P
At first, I was thinking it would look like a full HUD - think Mechwarrior or Heavy Gear. (bugsplat) Oh, woops, I lost my HUD - now I can't see through the windshield, *CRASH*. Mounted on the dash is nice, but it's one more thing for people to look at. We have enough irresponsible idiots on the road already, do we really need to give them _more_ distractions? On second thought, give ALL of them one of these. Maybe natural selection will clear the roads a little.
Ok, so it's neat. But personally I'd rather go gargoyle and make one of Steve Mann's WearComps, and run around like that, than waste time putting distractions into a car. Now if I could just get some optical armor like they had in Ghost in the Shell. *drool*
Then again, you don't really need a car living in or near NYC, so maybe I don't count. But still
I think it's going to cause more accidents than it prevents, even if it is a neat toy and a cool idea. I'm pessimistic when it comes to humans, I can't help myself.
-Elthia
This SJMercury article has more info about the technology. Gives a good overview of the subject, and mentions Cadillac's system.
Also, I've seen similar night vision setups sold by a number of dealers specializing in armored vehicles. I can't find any specific links, though.
witold.org
That's what I wonder. If this heads up display is basically just a video screen, then you loose all real depth perception. Sure you can still drive, but I can't imagine it'd be better. (cool sure)
Also, where else is heads up technology used for such a high information density? Arn't heads up images translucent? This would be very cool if it made the driver precieve the images overlaied in space on their real view, but if the images floats at arms-length and is flat, I can see this causing accadents.
Well back in nam I had my standard issue 11/780, with two attached RA60's. Now what you had to understand is that charlie was carrying TK-50's. ha ha ha, imagine that, carrying TK-50's into a warzone! ha, and they wheren't getting VUPS worth a damn. charlie didn't know what hit them half the time.
For a few months I've had Alpine's Mulitmedia Controller deck. I installed a small infrared camera behind the grill and presto. Sure, I have to take my eyes off the road to look at the screen, but it been real useful in certain situations.
I don't think this is all good, folks. I mean think about it - do you really want the people who drive Cadillacs to feel encouraged to come out driving at night? I've seen 4'2" Grannies park their SS Devilles into a tree in broad daylight, with no other cars on a straight piece of road. I don't exactly feel "safer" with this invention, for some reason.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It has always been my opinion that the coolest new technology is the one predicted in science fiction, whether it be television or print. And this new Infrared technology with a HUD display is just another example. Anyone remember the TV movie Knight Rider 2000? It came out a few years after the TV series ended. Well, the new model KITT had this exact technology.
I'm probably the only one who knows what I'm talking, but all the same, I think it's pretty damn cool! If it weren't for the fact that I'd be constantly distracted by the HUD, I'd definitely want this as a feature in my next new car.
Someone I know was working on a HUD system for cars for a local engineering firm, and they finally stumbled upon a rather obvious problem: polarized sunglasses will block the image. Of course, this is no problem for night-driving aids (presumably), but it might prevent useful HUD navigations aids, etc.
For me at least - I can't stand driving in sunlight without polarized shades.
IR HUDs would do wonders for police.
They would also make escaping from fender benders easy, you just have to get a switch for your running lights.
Good for use Up North too, you can never have too much warning when it comes to mooses.
has anybody noticed that the quality of moderation has gone substantially downhill recently? no offense to winterstorm, but his post does not warrant a score of 3 (and i bet it will be 4 or 5 soon). people just moderate up the early comments, and a lot of good comments later on never get scored up.
Cars sold in the US suffer from crappy DOT-approved lighting. If only we could get Euro spec lighting approved in the US, then we would not have to resort to night vision to see what's ahead of us in the dark! I converted to european lighting on my 1985 VW GTI, and it is absolutely awesome! The kit that I used comes with 7 inch round H4 headlights (same as used on the european GTIs) and H3 fog lamps. I can run 90/130W H4 bulbs without blinding oncoming drivers - way cool! It takes a bit of rewiring, though :)
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
A lot of people seem to be confusing night vision and thermal imaging. This system does not replace headlights, and isn't night vision. In other words, it does not magnify the intensity of light electronically and spit it out onto a CRT (although wouldn't it be nice to have no more streetlights or headlights ever! no light pollution, no more having to drive 200 mi. to watch the Leonids). All this is is a simple infra-red (heat sensing) mechanism. It can pick up things that would usually be out of the range of your headlights, provided there is some sort of temperature contrast. Typically, this would be a warm person walking by the side of the road at night, or a deer, or freshly wrecked cars, etc. I guess you could use it to see a really cold person on a hot day too ;) Think "Predator" with his mask on, sans the hydraulic hair and cool breathing noises. Same thing, except from what I have seen they don't colorize the picture so it's all one monochromatic scene with varying tints signifying different heat levels. Living in Los Angeles, this is pretty worthless (Although Jason Priestley might argue), but I'm sure someone, somewhere will benefit from it.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This has been in the works at Cadillac for years now. I'm surprised that it hasn't been on Slashdot before now.
And anyway, it's not the entire windshield, it's just a small rectangle at the lower edge directly in front of the steering wheel. The idea is that it gives you IR highlights of what's in front of you without obscuring your normal vision.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
http://www.cadillac.com/t ech/nightmoves/see/notshocked.html
for the plugin-free.
--
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This will be a great aid for places such as Northern Maine, where it's generally considered unsafe to drive at night, let one get run over by a moose. (for those of you city folk who don't understand how it works: you don't run over the moose, the moose runs over you. Or at least just stands there. Either way, the moose is the one that's going to walk away.) Wonder what its range is . . .
\
They also demonstrated how you couldn't see the person walking on the side of the road with normal vision and headlights, but when using the HUD you could see the person as clear as day.
I think this will ultimately wind up in most top of the line cars very soon.
The zoomed view on military FLIR systems is something like 6 degrees. It's probably even less than that on the Cadillac system (extreme tunnel vision, often looking the wrong way).
I have to agree. My posting did not show any insight! I'm shocked that it got moderated up to three (+1 for insightful, and +1 for interesting). I think perhaps it deserved the interesting vote, but frankly it was just a random thought that crossed my mind.
If you dislike what the moderators do, please meta-moderate. I meta-moderate every day. Hopefully the meta-moderation system has some effect and in the long run bad moderators won't have much effect. The more moderators we have the better, and the more meta-moderators we have the better.
I am beginning to think that some new way to choose, or educate moderators is in order. Only comments made early in the life of a thread are likely to get moderated, and previously moderated (up) comments are more likely to get further moderated. I think we see a lot mis-use of "insightful" and "informative" as well, but meta-moderation should take care of that in the long wrong. A good question is, "Do moderators get informed when they are meta-moderated?" I'd certainly like to know when someone has officially meta-moderated my moderations.
Yes, about 5 degrees. The wide view is almost 30 degrees. Based on the videos I've seen of the actual Cadillac system, you'd have to be going around a very, very sharp curve to worry about what is outside the field of vision. I wonder how the stupid drivers (since there really are so many out there) would react to a viewpoint skewed so much from their forward direction.
is it just me... or did moderators rate any comment on this story with the slightest hint of humor at 3, or if you lack humor, but arn't an idiot get 3 for insightful or interesting.
...
... get it? fungi == fun guy! hahaha! +3 for funny! maybe +3 for interesting or insightful, this will get a +6, wait thats not even possible, so thats funny, I should get moderated even higher! WOOHOO!
For god's sake, a url to a shockwave page that is terribly done, and doesn't even correctly represent the device (it shows a small box, it doesn't cover the entire windshield) got a +5
After this story is done everyone and their mother will get a +1 for their karma of 10 or higher, except me, because this will be rated flame bait... hold on! I have an idea... a slight hint of humor: A mushroom goes into a bar right? He goes up to the bartender and says "hey bartender, give me a beer." The bartender says "I'm sorry, we don't serve your kind here." Mushroom says "why not?! I'm a fungi!."
In short: moderators: instead of being so happy you have a point or two to spend that you pick the best of the 20 comments, wait till the story has 200, then read the articles 95% of the moderators ignore, and give the one there that REALLY deserved a +4 or +5 a point, and ignore the bad shockwave link.
Just a Scrabble-oriented kind of gal,
Sumana
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Something nobody has mentioned (at least not when I read through everything), but which is important: the Cadillac system only points directly forward. So the moment you start to go around any kind of a curve, it only tells you whats off to the side of the road on the wrong side. The correct way to do it is for the camera angle to change in real time according to the angle of the steering wheel and your velocity. So as you curve to the right, it would angle to the right to point at where you're actually going to go (and maybe a little further to the right, since often what's critical is what's on the edge of the road). Added cost? Yes. Expensive? Probably not significantly more than the current system (assuming the camera fits in a small housing). But _so_ much more useful!
I suspect in a lot of cases early posts tend to catch the eye of eager moderators, who perhaps both moderate the post up at almost the same time (i.e. one doesn't see that the post has already been moderated up).
... although this may not be the best use of moderator points, it appears to be one of the intrinsic problems with the current moderation system.
... not sure how to get them to read that far, though! Sometimes it seems that /. is just too popular these days, and it is getting increasingly difficult to sift through the chaff to get to the wheat!
Another moderator can always moderate the post down
I do agree that a lot of good comments later in stories do not seem to attract the notice of moderators
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Couldn't you have a directable laser beam or something reflecting off of the inside of the windshield? Since the laser would be brighter than the outside when you're using it, you would be able to create a visible image on the windshield without replacing it. You don't want it too bright, though, or it'll burn your eyes out :-P
Another thing with that is that the image shifts when you do; you wouldn't have that with something embedded in the glass. I'm not sure if it would match up properly, though.
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
I'd guess oncoming traffic appears as a blob with a bright block (front radiator), and cars ahead of you either one or two points (exhaust)
While it's probably good for detecting cars, how can it detect people that well? I'd guess in the summer south of the Mason-Dixon line a person wouldn't show up very well, unless the thing has some ridiculous gain. But then another car on the road would make it auto-attenuate back down. Maybe it calls anything above ambient an object and displays a 'on' pixel for it.
Did anyone read about the reverse-collision thing? It says it works when you're going >= 3mph in reverse. Now if I were paranoid enough about backing in to get this, why would I be going in over 3mph, especially when I get close? Typo or something?
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
The infrared HUD doesn't work unless your headlights are on.
Read the article before posting next time please.
I think if you watch your own karma, you can see the effects of meta moderation ... i.e. if your karma increases a point or two (without you having had a post moderated up), you know people felt your moderations were fair, and that the converse is true if you go down a point or two.
... I suspect that the good meta moderators will look at the original articles and other posts to gain some context and perspective, but it is just too easy to click away without taking the time to really think about it.
However, right now it is pretty difficult to know WHICH of your moderations were meta moderated in either direction. Not much help if you really want to know what the meta moderators liked and disliked.
I also have some fears about meta moderation
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
You know there is going to be problems in the future of people watching TV and driving at the same time.
After taking a look at the Night Vision feature, I find that it's much better than using high-beam headlights to illuminate the road ahead of you.
On the subject of high beams, let me be the first to say that I absolutely abhor them. People seem to think that their right to see the road should overshadow mine. Sure, they can see everything ahead of them, but I sure can't! It's much worse when an SUV comes up behind you (even with the low beams on). The light reflects off my mirrors and blinds me (even with the rear-view mirror in the "night" position). Some people just don't know how to drive...
Problem is, every time I flash my headlights to tell someone to turn theirs down, they slow down instead, thinking that there's a speed trap ahead. And I'm still blinded. Go figure.
When did people stop taking responsibility for their actions? When the first SUV was created.
awkwardone
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
Get a black caddie, tint the windoze, paint over the chrome bumpers black as well.
Kick this sucker on at night, kill your lights. You're pretty much free to haul balls @ 150 if you want.
Sure, if you blast past a cop his radar'll pick you up. But once you're outa the range of his headlights you're pretty much invisible to him unless the highway is really well-lit (most aren't) or there's a really bright full moon.
Meanwhile, you just tracked the cop with your radar detector. So you know to pull off into the next rest area, wait a few minutes, then head back out @ 70 or so with your lights on like a good little motorist.
Of course, I'd want to do it with night vision goggles so I could see all around the car in whatever direction I looked instead of just what's in that little HUD.
Hmmm, If people started doing this the roads'd get quite a bit more dangerous. Probably it's a good thing that the geezers most likely to own caddies rarely drive at night, and hardly ever above 45 when they DO drive.
But what happens when this thing gets put on a Porche???
john
Imagine all the people...
Hmmm...
;-)
Hope someone will make a patch to have this for carmageddon
Last I checked you could get this on a Hummer! Far cooler, and safer to drive, and only slightly *grin* more expensive.
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
A little off topic, but...has anyone heard about other apps for car-mounted HUDs? Maybe soon well have maps linked to a GPS showing current location, all the info normally displayed on the *meters in a convenient out of the way place on our windshield, all controlled by voice.
If Only I had a spare Cryogenic chamber to take a nap in...
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
Perhaps Caddy does make custom windshields for these cars, but I doubt it.
I get plenty annoyed with the reflections off the top of my dashboard from certain angles even in daylight, so I have no difficulty believing they could make a display visible at night. Depends on whether they're trying to cause something to fluoresce within the windshield to make an image, or simply project an image from below so it reflects correctly to the driver. The former is very difficult; the latter requires only a thin LCD in the top of the dash, and maybe that part of the windshield be flat. The LCD should be mirrored top to bottom, so up is up when reflected once, and inverted black-to-white so the background is dark and objects show up light.
My question is, do they try to superimpose this image like a real HUD over your actual view of where you're going, or do they put it where you would otherwise see the hood of your car? If they're going for a real HUD you won't be able to move your head much or you'll get dangerous divergence of the images.
I wonder if I can see into somebody's house with this. I could use this to spy on all sorts of people. Maybe this will be a boon to the insulation industry, as couples start shielding their bedrooms, and stalking victims are forced to do their whole house.
There's no stopping off-duty cops from driving around your neighborhood in a caddilac either. "I just HAPPENED to notice..."
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Yes I heard about this story too. Don't remember much on the details, other than that the lambo was only for using drug running, and the cops didn't seem to care much when he sped by at 150+.
I also included some of the other features that most geeks would be interested in (CD-ROM Navigation, ect).
Cadillac DHS Base MSRP $ 44,700*
Individual Options:
- On-Board CD-ROM Based Navigation Display with Bose® 4.0 High Performance Music System Consists of: Six-Disc CD Changer (located in glove box) $ 1,995
- Radio - AM Stereo/FM Stereo, Cassette Tape and MiniDisc, Weatherband, Digital Signal Processing, Radio Data System, & Theftlock; Eight-Speaker Bose® Acoustic System $ 300
- Safety / Security Package Consists of: StabiliTrak, Ultrasonic Rear Parking Assist, Garage Door Opener - 3-Channel Programmable $ 895
- Night Vision $ 1,995
- Adaptive Seats, Driver and Front Passenger $ 995
Destination Charge $ 670Total MSRP $ 51,550*
infrared headlamps (and no, they are not in the caddy) would defeat the whole purpose, as incoming other cars would blind your IR just as visible-wavelength lights blind your eyes. on top of that: why would IR-headlamps go any further or be any stronger than halogen ones?
the cool thing about the IR solution is that it uses ambient IR - THAT makes it so good. IR headlamps would be useful only for stealth car drivers - maybe if you love spy movies, or if you think the government is out to get you... hmmm... or if you want to avoid highway patrols?!
I can see cars and people easily (except for those people who walk really slowly across the street wearing all black and assume you'll stay out of their way). But what I want is to see the lane markings. All those ugly orange lights in the city make it impossible to see the lines when the roads are wet because the lights reflect off the surface of the water.
Military hardware with night vision, when they don't work so well, and admission that they do cause mishaps in some instances.
Now we'll know what sheets floating across the road are.
Get them while they last, goggles for Y2K. So when you drive around in your caddy on Jan 1, you'll know where to swerve in order to hit those nuts running around in the dark.
Finally, some (real?) statistics about how night vision in cars increases safety.
I love moose meat in my diner plate and cooked, not laying in the front seat of my car raw!
It looks sort of like playing 'Doom' with the IDBEHOLD,V invulnerability code on. ;)
.ad.
Speaking of cops, this should do wonders for speeders trying to avoid tickets, since when cops hide, they always have their engines running. This should make it easy to spot them a nice long way off - even before a radar detector would warn you. Of course, unless you are on the highway, you might get a lot of false alarms from patrons in store parking lots, etc...
I'd think that it would have localized attenuation or gain so that the heat of a car does not blind the system of a person standing near the car. At least that's what I would try to have the system do.
About the reverse collision thing, I don't think that >= 3MpH is all that fast. Anything less than that can probably be absorbed by the rear bumper without much if any damage.