CAR CRASHES could be prevented at busy road junctions by making tall trucks and buses 鈥渢ransparent鈥�.
A team from the University of Tsukuba in Japan say that if you could see through the vehicles obscuring your view, junctions would be easier to navigate and accidents might be avoided.
With 80 million cars on its roads, Japan has some of the heaviest traffic in the world, says Ken Perret, an expert in intelligent transport systems at Britain鈥檚 Transport Research Laboratory in Crowthorne, Berkshire.
Advertisement
So the Japanese government is introducing a range of new technologies to make driving safer. It has already installed roadside screens that tell drivers how congested the road ahead is.
Their next step is to monitor traffic for congestion and accidents using video cameras stationed on masts along major roads and at busy intersections, says Perret. But Yuichi Ohta and his team in the university鈥檚 engineering department say computers in passing cars could also use this video data to help drivers avoid hidden dangers.
Ohta鈥檚 group has developed a prototype computer system called NaviView, which picks up images from nearby cameras via a short-range radio link. NaviView then processes the data to create a 3D image of the traffic. Because the cameras are mounted on tall masts, NaviView obtains an unobstructed view of all the nearby vehicles.
The software then recreates the image from the driver鈥檚 perspective and displays it on a screen inside the car. There鈥檚 one big difference, though. Instead of foreground vehicles obscuring those behind them, vehicles in the background are superimposed on those in front. This makes closer traffic seem transparent, allowing you to see hidden motorcycles and cars.
The image is updated in real time and could be displayed on a screen like those used for route-finding. But later, Ohta hopes to develop the technology to project the image onto the windscreen, like a pilot鈥檚 鈥渉ead-up鈥� display, so called because they do not force the user to look down. Drivers could then see the hidden traffic while looking straight ahead, as normal.
Ohta says the system would be particularly useful at intersections where drivers are trying to turn across the stream of oncoming traffic but where other vehicles obscure their view (see Diagram).
鈥淚t鈥檚 often difficult to watch the moving cars in the opposite lane because they are occluded,鈥� Ohta says. NaviView would get rid of those blind spots, he says. 鈥淭he driver can see the occluded cars through the obstacles in the intersection.鈥� He is now working on a system that can do the job with data from just one video camera.
Perret says the technology could easily be adopted by Japanese drivers. Nearly 3 million vehicles in Japan already have route-guidance screens. 鈥淚t fits in well with their in-car equipment,鈥� he says. But Perret warns that the system could be very confusing if the graphics aren鈥檛 simple and accurate.
Mike MacDonald, director of the Transport Research Group at the University of Southampton, agrees the system could have difficulties. 鈥淚f it鈥檚 very reliable, people will start relying on it too much. Then when it does go wrong, you might actually be more likely to get an accident.鈥�