Driving with a trailer in tow leaves with you a gigantic blind spot directly behind your vehicle. So to make it easier to keep an eye on traffic following you, Land Rover has come up with a way to make trailers appear to be transparent using strategically placed cameras.
The system augments a Land Rover’s existing rear-view backup camera, as well as the cameras on the side mirrors, with yet another wireless camera that can be mounted to the back of whatever a vehicle is towing; be it a horse trailer, a camper, or even a big U-Haul box.
The footage from all of these cameras is intelligently combined into a single feed that’s provided to drivers through an LCD rear-view mirror. Not only are they able to see vehicles and other traffic behind them, they also get a ghosted view of the trailer they’re towing so they can ensure the cargo is still safe.
The software developed for the new system also ensures that the images being fed to the driver aren’t warped or distorted, even though they’re all being captured at different angles and varying distances from the vehicles. This ensures the driver has an accurate picture of what’s going on around a vehicle, so making lane changes, or even backing up, is a lot safer with a trailer attached.
[Land Rover via Pocket-lint]