"See Through Technology – Real X-Ray Vision!"

Prius See Through

In one of our cars we have that annoying little back-up beeper, you know the one, it senses if anything is behind your car and emits a faster and faster beep tone the closer you get to running whatever it is over. The other car has a backup camera, much less annoying, and it has in fact, prevented me from running over my father in the driveway more than once. This next item may make both of those totally obsolete…

Check out what researchers at Keio University, in Japan, are working on, a system that by means of something called optical camouflage, will make the backseat of your car appear invisible (wish that existed on the night of my senior prom) Anyhow, the technology isn’t new, the concept was developed by Susumu Tachi and his colleagues, almost 10 years ago and works by capturing footage from behind an object, and then transmitting that footage onto the object itself. Check out Tachi’s invisibility cloak HERE.

This tech has now been integrated into what is being hailed as a see-through Prius which is going to be shown at this month’s Digital Content Expo in Tokyo, Japan. This nifty little Prius actually gives it’s driver the feeling of operating a vehicle that is made of glass. Researchers have now modified that idea to perhaps create a new safety feature in our cars. It appears that a display attached to the driver’s headrest might someday project what was visible behind the car onto the back seat making the backseat seem invisible. Awesome.

I’m all for a little augmented reality in my car, and anything that replaces the annoying beep alert is tops in my book, and while a good old fashioned head turn used to be good enough, I do see some real benefit to really being able to see behind my car. Hey dad? Where’d you go?