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The next generation of mirrors
- lacker 18y agoInteresting that US law forbids curved rear view mirrors in cars. Too bad, those seem very improvable.
- steamboiler 18y agoDoes anyone know why? Just a wild guess, could it be possible that drivers might get distracted with too much visual information?
- cool-RR 18y agoIt's probably because they distort the size/distance of objects, and drivers not accustomed to that might make an accident because of it.
- alecst 18y agoThe answer to this question can be found here: http://forums.projektgerman.com/showthread.php?p=83238 http://forums.projektgerman.com/showthread.php?p=83238
- russell 18y agoOne of the comments in the article links to another article on how to adjust your mirrors so that you dont have blind spots. http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm I hate the convex mirrors because I cant judge distances backing up in tight spaces.
- newt0311 18y agoIts the government. Making idiotic useless (or on a more moderate note: shortsighted) regulation is its purpose in life.
- axod 18y agoThe "Objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are" warning is a US thing also isn't it?
- sfphotoarts 18y agoyes, welcome to the Nanny State... Much along the same idea, coming out of the Ferry Building in San Francisco a few days back when it was pouring with rain, someone had helpfully put out cones to warn me that I was entering the outside and that it was wet. The black sky, and cats and dogs falling from it might have also tipped me off, but thankfully I had the cones as confirmation :)
- petercooper 18y agoI just Googled around for objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are and objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. Two totally different things. Thousands of results. Which one is actually true? Surely if objects are further away than they appear, it's pointless to note that since it's safe. So it has to be "Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear" right?
- likpok 18y ago"objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear" If you think about it, it is a concave mirror giving wider field of vision. Concave mirrors give virtual smaller images.
- twopoint718 18y agoConvex mirrors will produce a smaller virtual image (behind the plane of the mirror) taken from a wider field of view. Concave mirrors will produce an inverted real image (for objects farther away than the focal length) or a larger virtual image (for objects inside the focal length).
- cstejerean 18y agoIt's actually the opposite, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. In fact they are closer, this is for the passenger side mirrors. Cars always look farther away in it than in the driver side mirror or in the middle rear-view mirror
- tlb 18y agoI'm no proponent of the nanny state, but there is something to be said for standards. It's important that any driver be able to drive any car. Otherwise, a driver used to 1:1 mirrors who rented or borrowed a car with convex mirrors would underestimate the speed and distance of cars passing him.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Mystalic 18y agoAlthough an amazing feat, it means little if it costs something like $50,000 to produce. Hope it can become a consumer usable good. For nwo though, there's a lot of industry uses.
- cool-RR 18y agoIt's really amazing, does anyone has a link to an explanation of how this works? does anyone have a theory? Also: Does the car driver mirror work from just the driver's angle, or from every angle? It would be amazing if it worked from every angle.
- swombat 18y agoThey say it in the article... the mirror's curve is calculated to cause the light to be bounced more than once before being reflected to the viewer - so it's more like several mirrors, except they're built into a single physical object that looks like a mirror.
- cool-RR 18y agoI read that. I meant an explanation which actually shows how it's built, not just describing generally its principle of operation.
- jacquesm 18y agoa guy called Michiel Kassies holds a european patent on a structure like that, this was obtained somewhere in '86 so in europe probably at or near expiry. I don't know how to find European patents online otherwise I'd look it up, filing date was probably late '85 or early '86. The thing was wedge shaped for better aerodynamics but looked from the inside of a car like a normal side mirror. No clue anymore how the thing worked exactly except that it was lots and lots of thin sheets with all kinds of interesting properties.
- newt0311 18y agoThe guy who designed these has a webpage here: http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/ http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/. One of the links on the page lead to more information on the design of the mirrors.
- iamwil 18y agoMy first inclination would have been to solve this sort of stuff by digital manipulation. But on second thought, once built, it's a static piece of hardware that essential does a single compose-able image transformation that requires no processing power--almost like a pre-processor. It just doesn't handle the requirement if the transformation has to change from moment to moment.
- shiro 18y agoOr you can say, these mirrors do calculation by reflecting lights in specific ways---it's real-time, continuous calculation. Electronic digital circuits aren't the only way to calculate.