Or a more passive "see through walls" radar system which takes advantage of wireless routers developed by University College London. When wireless radiation from WiFi routers passes through moving objects it gets slightly modified by the Doppler effect. A sensitive receiver can pick up on those frequency shifts and locate moving objects.
However, one might not need to see through walls to improve passenger safety with Augmented Reality. One might only need to see around them, or rather, around corners.
In many situations when line-of-sight is obstructed by buildings, approaching an intersection or turning into one may be dangerous. Crossing vehicles, pedestrians, or cyclists might surprise a driver who's braking distance might be too far into crossing traffic.
Some intersections are deployed with Convex Mirrors for this purpose.
However, with such mirrors the distance to an object is harder for a driver to estimate, as its speed. It also requires the driver to shift their focus to the mirror rather than the road, which can create other problems with hazards that are directly in the driver's line-of-sight.
A system developed by Carnegie Mellon University is using Augmented Reality techniques for overlaying live footage taken from cameras positioned on the walls of buildings in a problematic intersection onto live footage taking from the driver's point-of-view and combines them in real-time, such that they both appear to be taken from the driver's point-of-view.
With many cities installed nowadays with networks of CCTV cameras, it should be possible, according to the researchers, to integrate such sources of live footage into the system.
The idea has been explored before by researchers from Japan in a system that integrates footage from surveillance cameras allowing the user of the device to see obscure and hidden areas, essentially "through walls" and other obstacles.
The disadvantage of the approach is that it takes a lot of processing power to get right, and depending on where the CCTV cameras are positioned it may be hard to impossible to perfectly overlay the image without distortion. Therefore, some researchers (also from Japan) have explored the option of using the data from CCTV cameras but instead of overlaying the image as if the driver can "see through walls", they use abstract objects (such as a circle) to mark an object approaching from an obscure area. The approach may be more practical to implement, but its advantages over the "see-through" effect are yet to be fully studied. Although the processing power needed may be reduced, and the accuracy increased (due to the simplified problem), it remains to bee seen whether drivers can respond to the information in real-time with a similar effectiveness as the "see-through" approach.
I would imagine the best application for this being integrated onto a vehicle's heads-up-display, noting the driver of possible collision. For safety purposes this would have to be instantaneous (or "real-time"). Take a look at the linked paper on a practical application of this approach - the intent there is to make it simple enough for it to become real-time.
Current pre-collision detection systems use varying methods for detecting a potential collision with objects that are in the driver's line-of-sight (e.g. radar or real-time video analysis).
As an extension to the model of pre-collision warning systems, it would be great if such information garnered from either cameras or sensors in problematic junctions would present itself in much the same way on the driver's windshield (perhaps noted by an audible signal as well) to warn the driver of a potential collision (or for the car to take action and brake in emergency situations).
Current pre-collision detection systems use varying methods for detecting a potential collision with objects that are in the driver's line-of-sight (e.g. radar or real-time video analysis).
As an extension to the model of pre-collision warning systems, it would be great if such information garnered from either cameras or sensors in problematic junctions would present itself in much the same way on the driver's windshield (perhaps noted by an audible signal as well) to warn the driver of a potential collision (or for the car to take action and brake in emergency situations).
Another interesting extension of this model is for fully-autonomeous cars, such as Google's Driverless Car. If you could detect approaching objects around corners it would provide the car with more time to react to hazardous situations.
I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting article.
ReplyDeleteIt shows that apart from the real world benefits of AR it could just as easily feature in Science Fiction. But that too will become our reality as google glass promises to make inroads into our lives later this year.
The new Sci-Fi Novel The Augmented Star (http://tinyurl.com/aak8poa) on the Kindle store I think perfectly. captures these ideals.