The next part of your car to get smart — the rearview mirror

Japanese automotive manufacturer Nissan has announced it will be updating its rearview mirrors with new smart visual displays that will provide a clearer picture of the road behind the car. 

Worth noting: the display can be switched off and returned to a normal mirror at any time. 

When the LCD monitor is engaged, it provides the driver with a clear, wide-angle view of the road behind the car, despite weather or heavy traffic conditions, or even if the rear window is obstructed by passengers or luggage in the backseat. This is because a high-resolution, narrow-angle camera is mounted on the exterior rear of the car. 

Pairing a wide-angle camera lens with an LCD monitor was no easy feat though. That’s because when the images were sent from the camera to the specially designed LCD monitor, the size of the image had to be adjusted, which wound up producing a low-resolution image with insufficient picture quality.

To remedy this issue, a 1.3-Mpixel narrow-angle camera was created so that the picture quality would be high quality.

The next issue: standard monitors are equipped with an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9, neither of which can be adequately displayed in a rearview mirror. To fix this particular problem, an LCD monitor with an aspect ratio of 4:1 was created.

Lastly, the research group found that when the mirror and LCD monitor were used together, the transparency of the monitor and the reflection in the mirror create an image overlap. To overcome this hurdle, the structural design of the LCD monitor and mirror were adjusted accordingly, so as to enable both to function without any image overlap.

The result is a wider view of the back than any standard mirror on the market today, which allows the driver to better check their blind spots and the traffic behind them. Also, sunlight and headlamp glare are automatically reduced by the system, which has several different modes to choose from, including one that provides the driver with a bird’s eye view when parking in tight spots.

Andy Palmer, Nissan’s Chief Planning Officer and Executive Vice President, said in a statement:

“Smart rearview mirror will give our customers the best possible view no matter how tall the passengers in the back seat, or the road conditions. It also offers the possibility of new and exciting designs for our upcoming models because Smart rearview mirror is an alternative to a very wide rear window for good visibility. We’ll have the flexibility to create new shapes, and to further improve aerodynamics for better fuel efficiency.”

To learn more about Nissan’s new smart rearview mirror, check out the videos below.

The technology will be on display at the 84th annual Geneva Motor Show. Nissan is planning to introduce the Smart rearview mirror to global markets in 2015, with the product first being offered as a dealer option this spring in the Japan market.

Story via: Nissan