Video: Transparent wall
If only drivers could see through walls, blind corners and other dangerous road junctions would be much safer. Now an augmented reality system has been built that could just make that come true (see video, above).
The prototype uses two cameras: one that captures the driver's view and a second that sees the scene behind a view-blocking wall. A computer takes the feed from the second camera and layers it on top of the images from the first so that the wall appears to be transparent.
This makes it simple to glance "through" a wall to see what's going on behind it. But the techniques needed to combine them were challenging to develop, says Yaser Sheikh of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Altered images
The view of the hidden scene needs to be skewed so that it looks as if it were being viewed from the position of the person using the system. The system does this by spotting landmarks seen by both cameras: the one seeing the hidden view and the one with the same view as the user.
Sheikh and his colleagues also had to develop software that transforms moving objects in the images to avoid distortion.
Ultimately, the team want to build the system into a car. An onboard video processor would tune into a wireless feed from a roadside camera with a view of the hidden scene, such as a stretch of road behind a blind corner, and project the image of the hidden scene onto the windscreen rather than a monitor.
The project is funded by Denso, a car parts manufacturer based in Kariya, Japan.
Future view
"It's an interesting peek into the future," says Bruce Thomas of the University of South Australia in Adelaide. He points out that many cities already have networks of CCTV cameras that could provide footage of hidden scenes.
Such a network could be supplemented by images from cameras mounted on many cars, says Shiekh. The Carnegie team is working on software that integrates feeds in footage from such sources into the system.
But Thomas adds that several formidable hurdles will have to be cleared before the technology can be used on public highways. Fast, powerful data processing and communication would be required to make the system work usefully in a moving car in real time.
"I'm not saying it's impossible," says Thomas. "But I don't see it in a car anytime soon."
The prototype system was presented at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Orlando, Florida, this week.
Jim Giles tweets at twitter.com/jimgiles
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Have your say
It's a wonderful idea! If it became common-place many accidents could would surely be avoided.
. . .
Sat Oct 24 01:31:58 BST 2009 by Dennis
http://freetubetv.net
I don't know where you live, but most accidents occurs because of negligence or bad weather conditions.
Being able to see through a wall doesn't necessarily make sense as to how it would prevent crashes or accidents?
Translucent walls and poles will make for very hazardous drivers. Many just wont see the walls and real objects in front of them because they are translucent.
so all we need now are cameras on ever corner linked to a massive computing core which uploads all these video feeds and processes info to send out to cars. All cars need to have the internet as well as gps systems. Also no lag in this system.
I cant see any flaws at all :p
Cant all this be done with googlemaps + HUD and some good programming?
Or how about we let the cars onboard computer do all processing. And let the camera have a wireless broadcast system. You know, precisely as is stated in the article if you had bothered to read it.
As for googlemaps; all their images are static, how do you see incoming cars around corners if the picture is the same every time?
If that works under Windows... that'll never works!!
Seriously, i think that the future lies in self-driving cars that communicate with others so they don't bump in each other. That would make life easier and accidents would be rarer than actually improving cars to be adapted to a human's reaction time. We, as a species, will never be as quick as a computer processing tons of informations in a second.
Agree in general; cars could be switched to auto mode within towns. However, hackers undoing the programmed inhibitions of vehicles could destroy the future of such a system. Not that this would stop politicians spending your money on it first. Some less "sexy" (lucrative) options are:
(a) restrict speeds to 80 kph, and 50 for streets with heavy pedestrian or motor traffic.
(b) lock up corrupt traffic policemen, employers who over-work commercial drivers and drivers who cause serious bodily harm.
(c) make all road dividers movable, and widen the side that is carrying more traffic
Hackers... didn't thought about this one, but now that you're speaking of it, that would be quite easy to come up with some ideas that would make it secure.
Look at video games consoles. If something is wrong because you hacked your console, the companies sends a message to the console to "brick" it (making it unuseful). Now, do it, but for you future cars. Once bricked, to make sure everything's okay with the other vehicles passing by, the bricked car could send a message to other cars to signal its presence.
Anyway, we're still a long time before we see such a thing...
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