Despite many of the safety innovations found in raw vehicle — rear cameras , rear blindspot sensors , machinelike braking — the canonical chassis of a car remains a bite of a problem . Blocky pillars that give the vehicle structure and support can impair a driver ’s power to see past the four turning point of the cabin . Now , we may ultimately have a resolution .
Alaina Gassler , an eighth grader from West Grove , Pennsylvania , won the grand prize at the Society for Science & the Public ’s Broadcom MASTERS ( Math , Applied Science , Technology , and Engineering for rise wizard ) science reasonable competition for her practical invention . Using a camera mounted outside of the car , an image of the surroundings is picked up and fed to an interior front - projection lens that displays the footage on the pillar , which has beencoveredin a retroreflective fabric . The result is almost an optical illusion , where the pillar appear to become transparent .
Gassler ’s idea has yet to be evaluated by automobile manufacturers . Variables like heavy rain or snow could impair the camera ’s field of imaginativeness , for case , and projected figure might be hard to see in all-encompassing daytime .
Car manufacturer Jaguarintroduceda similar pillar imaging system of rules in 2014 , but it has not yet gone beyond the image stage . Safety additions to vehicles are typically met with uttermost scrutiny . The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) facilitate determine guidelines and enforce federal standard for these additions . late , they ’ve beenevaluatingside- and rear - climb up cameras intended to substitute rearview mirror .
For her originative and inexpensive solution , Gassler took home a $ 25,000 prize . It ’s all the more remarkable considering that , at 14 , she ’s not yet even old enough to drive .
[ h / tGizmodo ]
