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May 06, 2005

Passenger Cars and Cameras

From Globe and Mail:
A story on the role of cameras in passenger cars. For example, how U.S. safety regulations are pushing manufacturers to use cameras to judge whether to deploy an airbag depending on the size of the passenger (e.g., adult or child). The article notes that camera systems will face competition from radar systems. Radar is better at determining distances, while cameras are better at identifying objects.

The article covers how Nissan is adopting smart cameras in its cars:

Nissan's system -- part of options packages that start at about $5,000 -- has a tiny camera that watches the road, and an on-board computer that analyzes the car's position and how quickly it is approaching the dividing line, explains Ian Forsyth, director of marketing at Nissan Canada in Toronto. The warning works at speeds above 70 kilometres an hour, and not if the turn signal is on. It's meant for highway cruising -- the driver can deactivate the camera on a winding road, for example, where tight curves could confuse it. It's available in the Infiniti FX and M models

Nissan's latest back-up camera for its Infiniti M uses multiple cameras and projects the path the car will follow. The system uses red, yellow and green to indicate the danger of hitting an obstacle, making manoeuvres such as parallel parking easier. A more elaborate system the company showed off earlier this year, the Around View Monitor, shows what's surrounding the car. A computer combines images from cameras on all sides of the car to create a bird's-eye view that shows the vehicle and surrounding objects from above, displaying it on a dashboard screen.

Posted by rshah at May 6, 2005 11:18 PM

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