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A system that eliminates blind spots made by a 14-year-old girl

The blind spot that occurs when sitting in the driver’s seat of a car is wider than expected. This is the reason why traffic accidents that occur frequently due to overlooked pedestrians or bicycles overlapping with squares. A simple but innovative system developed by a 14-year-old girl to eliminate such car blind spots is a hot topic.

These days automobiles have a structure that uses window posts to increase collision safety and rigidity. However, the A-pillar located between the windshield and the side window creates a blind spot by obscuring the diagonal view in front of the driver. At first glance, the A-pillar isn’t thick enough to obstruct your vision and I don’t think it will significantly affect driving. However, in reality, the square created by the A-pillar can never be ignored.

For example, an intersection located near Southampton in England has a nice view, but many car and bicycle crashes occur. As a result of investigating why a collision occurs at such an intersection with good prospects, when a car and a bicycle that are orthogonal at the intersection have a constant speed ratio, the bicycle will proceed tens of meters with the bicycles overlapping the A-pillar blind spot, and when both reach the intersection, they collide It turned out to be. The A-pillar square means that there is a risk of causing a serious traffic accident.

The American non-profit organization SSP (Society for Science & the Public) has been holding Broadcom MASTERS, a science conference for middle school students in the United States since 2010. A 14-year-old girl (Alaina Gassler) who participated in the contest announced a project to improve vehicle safety through blind spot removal.

Her invention is to allow the background that will be hidden by the driver’s A pillar to be projected inside the A pillar. When a car driving on the road reaches the A-pillar blind spot, it is reflected in the image projected on the A-pillar in real time, clearly showing how the opposite side of the blind spot is. This system is built with parts made of a webcam, a projector, and a 3D printer. The webcam mounted on the passenger’s A-pillar shoots a square image, and a projector installed on the sunroof above the driver’s seat projects the image to the driver’s A-pillar in real time.

The image is projected properly even while the car is driving. In order to focus on the near target, the A-pillar was mounted on a part made by a 3D printer, and a special fabric was covered over it. She said that while experimenting with this system, she sat in the passenger seat and faced the problem of the projector light shining and a headache. So, I adopted a solution that covers the A-pillar with a special fabric. This fabric reflects light only toward the light source. Because it reflects light only in the direction of the projector, the driver next to the projector can see a clear image, while other passengers only see black fabric. This project is simple yet elegant. In the end, she won the Samuel Foundation and won a prize of $25,000. Related information can be found here .

lswcap

lswcap

Through the monthly AHC PC and HowPC magazine era, he has watched 'technology age' in online IT media such as ZDNet, electronic newspaper Internet manager, editor of Consumer Journal Ivers, TechHolic publisher, and editor of Venture Square. I am curious about this market that is still full of vitality.

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