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Driving with Night Vision 262

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-new-cars dept.
gub writes "Cadillac DeVille DHS and DTS 2000 models now have available Night Vision, a driver enhancement system giving you an extended view of the road ahead. Infrared technology detects thermal energy of objects beyond the range of your headlamps or hidden behind the glare of oncoming lights. The thermal images are superimposed via a HUD on your windshield. "
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Driving with Night Vision More

Driving with Night Vision

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  • He 'procured' a set of night scopes. I dont know where from, but imagine a 16 year old with a set of those things. His dad was in the military reserves, very active during th gulf wwar, but was a proctologist in civilian life.

    now comes the funny part: curfue, 18 miles to get home, and a choice: drive on the interstate, or take the back-roads, lights off...

    the bastard only knew there was a cop on to him because of his radar detector, the cop never saw him pass, just got a reading of 145mph

    the best part about it was that the kid got caught. I never found out how, but they got him, and strung him up. Attempted vehicular manslaughter, etc.

    laugh, but this happened more than 5 years ago, before you could get these things in any sony video camera, back when the technology had a limited availability. Think about it now.
  • I don't know about legality, however, I think it will probabally result in higher insurance rates for those who don't have a vehicle equipped with the device. Probabally not immediately, but in a few years if it is shown to be helpful. There are already lower rates for cars equipped with airbags, alarm systems, and non-smoking soccer moms.
  • Only if there are thirty or forty heads sitting in the field smoking up enough of a storm to generate an IR signature. I think they're more likely to repair to someplace with a Playstation.
  • I wonder if this is the same system that Jaguar cars developed last year? http://www.eet.com/news/98/1013news/night-vision.h tml http://www.babousa.org/viv.html
    --
    Paul Gillingwater
  • Eventually it'll be available for non-expensive cars as well, unless the market informs us that nobody really likes it. It'll probably follow the usual cost curve - soak the early adopters for the development costs and find out what features matter, second-wave pricing is much lower due to mass production, then Moore's Law gradually cuts the price further (though maybe not as fast as the computer power price curve, depending on how much of the real job is computer-related as opposed to sensors.)


    The real problem I see with HUDs is how to align the display with the rest of the windshield - the easy way is to just carve out a small section of the bottom of the window for the hud display, but if you're trying to project it on the whole window, you've got to figure out where the driver's head and eyes are so you can align the picture with the real world outside the windshield, a computer-intensive job that's probably too inaccurate to be worth doing, but which would be cool if you could get it right.


    Of course, your car also needs a "Use The Force, Luke!" interface to turn the stuff off quickly :-)
  • Visibility shouldn't be a factor, as you're responsible for not hitting anything with that vehicle which you're allegedly in control of.

    This HUD is actually installed under the line of sight. Visually it appears above the dashboard and under the front edge of the hood. You can still see everything outside the car normally. This HUD only gives you additional information, it does not block your view.

  • IR transmissivity is dramatically reduced by water in the air, both visible (fog) and invisible (absolute humidity). Smoke and dust can affect IR visibility especially if the cause of the smoke or dust is associated with thermal activity (an explosion) but in general dust and smoke particles do not block or distort IR energy nearly as much as water.

    The military uses absolute humidity to predict IR visibility ranges for various sensors because it's one of the biggest factors affecting IR transmissivity.

    Of course, how much the sensor is affected depends on the particular wavelength that sensor is sensitive to... Some of the best IR bands require active cooling to operate properly, but once the sensor is cooled they can provide incredible image resolution, temperature discrimination, and can "see" through dust, smoke, and some gasses without any problems. Water vapor is still a huge problem though.

    Short answer - don't expect an IR sensor to work in the rain or through fog, but they should work ok (probably lose some contrast and range) through dust and smoke.

  • It seems the moderation is often applied in a relative manner. Some stories just don't get any good comments, whereas others get quite a few. The system is really more useful this way instead of all the posts being 0s and 1s, even if they deserve it. You can just moderate all the post down in your mind, if you must.
  • probably, since they're both owned by the same company. Ford
  • Fuel-cell cars kick up significant heat, so they're probably fine in a world with these, but what about pure electrics? Would the brakes and maybe the climate control system be the only significant heat sources? Would they be enough to see an electric car by in warmer months?
  • A lot of things that ultimately show up in the auto market debut on Cadillac cars. As GM's high-end, they appeal to people with money to spare which is useful when a new tech is just coming out of the lab. A few things that Cadillac led with:

    They had a forerunner of ABS available in 1970.
    Air bags were available in the mid-'70s. So was EFI.
    They did tilt wheels in the '60s.
    I believe they were also the first GM division to add OnStar to their cars.

    The trend at GM is to move things down throughout the line - look for Night Vision to be on Buick and the high-end GM trucks (Suburban and Tahoe) in another year or two, then for it to be on Olds and Pontiac, followed by Chevy and (maybe) Saturn in the middle of the next decade.

    Night Vision is one of those things that screams "why didn't anybody think of it sooner". From what I've seen of it, it doesn't get in the way, and just spotlights things that are out of your headlights' range. I could use that when I'm staying on the Vineyard - the damn deer are everywhere on the island.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • Is this the same Cadilliac that can tell, using it's OnStar system and Satillites, EXACTLY where your Cadilliac is, as well as when and where you get in a wreck (air bag deployment)?

    I don't care WHAT they put on their cars. I'm not buying from a company whose disgruntled, underpaid workers can monitor my whereabouts.

    SocMeth
  • Short answer - don't expect an IR sensor to work in the rain or through fog, but they should work ok (probably lose some contrast and range) through dust and smoke.

    Thanks for the info.

    Too bad about the IR absorption. I might have bought one if it worked well in fog. Dust and smoke just aren't big enough problems here in Oregon to be worth the cash....
    --

  • We have to make the distinction between near-infrared and far-infrared/thermal imaging.

    Near-infrared is much like regular light, but just a bit longer wavelength than visible red light and doesn't have much to do with the temperature of an object. It is used by remote controls, computer IR ports, etc. and can be imaged with Sony Nightvision cameras. Many tranditional camcorders, digital cameras, quickcams and other CCDs can pick it up to a lesser extent (remote controls can be seen to blink for example). Some digital cameras can photograph in near-infrared with the addition of a filter and conventional cameras with special film. The Nightvision trick worked because many materials that appear opaque to us are transparent to varying degrees to near-infrared light. The sun is used as a big fat IR light source, and the visible light which would normally obscure the image is blocked out by a special filter, sold separately :-). I haven't had a chance to check out one of those cameras, but I suspect that they have some small source of IR light (IR LEDs probably) for actually nighttime photography.

    Far-infrared or thermal imaging reqires more expensive equipment and actually picks up on warm objects. You can see that sort of thing on Cops when they're chasing the baddies around with the helicopter at night. I suspect that's what this uses because near-infrared would pick up on everything and would require an infrared light source that extends farther than your headlights. If it does use far-IR then I don't think you could pull off the same trick as with the Sony Nightvision cameras. If it uses near-IR, I still doubt you could pull it off because it would only work in the day, during which the feature is probably not useable. Either way, it would be MUCH cheaper for your average pervert to get a Sony Nightvision camcorder than a Cadillac (I'm sure somebody's found a way to get around the modifications Sony's made to "fix" it.)

  • Would it interfere with our stereoscopic distance perception?
  • Most accidents almost certainly do not happen at night because most driving occurs during the day. I'm not sure if the percentage of accidents per number of
    drivers on the road goes up.


    That's exactly what I was trying to say!!

    Therefore, I think this is an unnecessary technology, that will certainly NOT improve my driving experience. *ah* someone understands...
  • ...teenagers will be taking FLIR cameras instead.

  • Funny, but sadly, you can't leave your headlights off with newer cars. There's a thing known as "daytime running lights" that the major automakers are making standard on almost all vehicles. My '99 Chevrolet Prizm has DRLs, and they're all right (though I would never use them at night). So, with a newer car, it's harder to leave the lights off.

    Good idea, though...



    awkwardone

  • IR != heat vision (Score:3)

    by Jamie Zawinski ( 775 ) <jwz@jwz.org> on Sunday December 05, 1999 @10:26PM (#1477938) Homepage

    People often assume that seeing infrared means seeing heat, and that's just not true. That's the difference between ``near infrared'' and ``far infrared.'' Things that are hot throw off far infrared in the same way that things that are really hot throw off visible light.

    The Sony Nightshot camera, and all of those nightvision scopes you can buy on the web for from $200-$3000 are near-IR, which means that they can only see objects that are illuminated by an IR light source, like an IR spotlight, or (sometimes) the ambient IR from the night sky.

    Thermal imaging hardware is insanely expensive. I understand that this is because it requires tremendously low temperatures, e.g., liquid nitrogen cooling. The explanation I heard is that, analagous to the way the inside of a camera must be completely dark to pick up light without interference, the inside of a heat imager must be completely cold to pick up heat without interference.

    Anyway, I'm not an expert on how thermal imaging works, but I do know that it's not available in any kind of ``cool toy'' price range, so I seriously doubt that's what this car has. It's far more likely that the car has a near-IR CCD camera, and IR headlights.

    BTW, almost all CCDs see slightly into near-IR beyond the range of human vision: if you look through any modern camcorder and press the button on a remote control, you'll be able to see the beam.

  • The police already use helicopters with IR to detect indoor growing operations, even in medium size cities like Indianapolis. It's the grow lights that draw thier attention. I went to a police auction and forbade my roomate from buying $2000 lights for $1 because they're just so easy to spot from the air. Also, I think the cops were going to follow the buyer home.


    -Barry
  • Suppose you get into an accident on the highway at night in your high-tech automobile. Imagine the insurance adjuster claims visibility was a factor, would you get penalized for having this high-tech device. Technology is often demonized in court.
  • and her 'poon
    Uh, wasn't she only 15 or thereabouts?
    Even if she was hot, you'd have to watch out for the Dentata...

    Pope
  • This could be a great tool for those of us who have to make loooong drives at night for work or other reasons. It would be a great help to long distance truckers, I would imagine, allowing them to extend their driving further into the night with somewhat less worries about their vision.

    But how well does it work? Will it really provide significantly more safety? Will it even be viable? When will it become mainstream? How much extra will we have to pay? What might be side effects? So many questions have to be considered before we all jump on the bandwagon. Just my $0.02.

    ---
    Tim Wilde
    Gimme 42 daemons!
  • Wow! I crap on the US as much as anybody, but this is ridiculous.
    --
  • This looks pretty cool, but I couldn't find any actual pictures of the system at work on their site. Does anyone know where there are any?

  • ... (Score:2)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    Finally I can ignore those annoying people who drive with their high-beams on or use colored headlights. As a sidenote - this will also enable you to see people walking down the side of the road - a definite safety plus. I rather wonder though what it looks like - engines generate lots of heat, plus in the winter you have all that heat energy in the passenger compartment - wouldn't that make it rather difficult to distinguish between two cars driving next to each other in different lanes? Hmmm, well... time will tell. Either way that's pretty cool. I wonder how long until it makes it into the hands of the less fortunate souls that don't have a spare 100k lying around to get a car...
  • yeah, but there is a bit of an alignment problem, because a system like that must either 1)assume your eye posistion, or 2)be able to dynamically determine it and adjust the image accordingly. Otherwise you will be shifting the image you are relyng on to navagate your can with respect to reality. It could get confusing.
  • Yo homeboyz, dis is tops! Now me en my hommies can install dat targetin' system fer da drive-bys. Yo!

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • CHeck out their little demo and you'll see how visible live and/or hot things are; it's impressive. But the street sign shows up as black. Does this mean that street signs will be unreadable? I imagine there's some way around it other than switching off your scope, or Cadillac are just begging for lawsuits.
  • That's great for drive-by shootings. I gotta have one.
  • One: human beings should rely more on their senses and less on gadgetry.

    Two: there is no pressing need for enhanced "night vision" in cars. I mean, if you can't handle night driving, get a hotel room.

    Peace out. Warm fuzzies. Happy Happy. Satan.

  • Remember Sonys Nightvision camera (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder how long before someone abuses this peice of nightvision (convert it to x ray vision), like they did with the Sony Handycam, looking through peoples clothes as you drive could be dangerous.
  • So, how long until someone puts a targeting recticle on theirs? ( you know, sorta like the big hood ornaments that Mercedes have :)

  • My '99 Golf has DRLs too..
    I can 'turn-off' the DRLs and run dark
    by pulling the Emergency brake up to the
    first tick. The car thinks I'm parked,
    and the lights go out.

    The first tick of the emergency brake doesn't
    apply any (noticable) braking...(I hope)..
  • I remember speeding down hilly curvy PA routes and turning my lights off just for the rush. I'm sure I would've hacked the HUD just to impress my friends in their primitive vehicles.
  • Last year at the New York International Car Show at Javits Cadillac had a booth where you could demo this. It was quite strange to say the least.... but I could see in 2 or 3 minutes that it would work good once you're used to it.

    If you go here [abella.net] I've got a picture called "Night Vision Evoq" that has a good picture of where the night vision scope reads from on the car. There are also other pictures from the car show.
  • .
    --
    Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
  • I'm not surprised it looks so good, we're dealing with a BIG corp here, folks!

    Yeah, they hired some good graphic artists, woohoo. (actually, the oncoming car seems to slow down as it gets closer to you...)



    I think it's going to cause more accidents than it prevents

    Perhaps we should instead have something that goes "Warning! Warning! Crash imminent!" in a robotic voice while red lights flash...

  • If you had any idea how many drivers and pedestrians were killed each year by other drivers going too fast... Slow Down - It's not big, and it's not clever.

    ---------
    To hell with you, I never liked you, you are no friend of mine...

  • If you're on a loose surface (such as sand or gravel) then a locked wheel will build up a wedge of material in front of it, which helps slow it down. ABS stops this happening, which is mostly why rally cars don't get fitted with ABS even though it's legal.

    The train company are being truly nasty on this one and I'd do my best to publicise what they've done if I were you, but they are right that ABS (marginally) increases stopping distances on loose surfaces. It's so much better on any solid surface that it's still something you should look out for on your next car, though.

    Greg

  • Re:Nice... but does it work? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is not going to be in a handy place for you
    to drive by really. I heard that it would be in
    a small counsel where you may glance down at it.

    What many people dont know. Is that TRUE INFRARED Imagery (which this (Uncooled Staring Array)) is terribly flat. And is very hard to strictly navigate by.

    Part of the problem is that IR sources really only show intensity and do not show shadows. You really have to be trained right to use this imagery for strictly guidance. Currently, the newest technology would be image fusion where combining True IR imagery along with a good CCD camera gives a true 3D representation of the scene.

    The system in the vehicle is really good. But, to reduce cost I beleive that the display is lousy.

    - ciao
  • This actually occurred to me last time I had moderator points and I'd be delighted if the moderation guidelines could be changed to take account of this.

    What I decided was the fairest solution was for me to view in nested mode so I could follow the threads easily, but with it set to newest first. That way I wasn't seeing all that much taht had already been moderated, but saw plenty of good stuff.

    Alternatively, view at lowest score first. That way you'll find the AC comments which start off at 0 (something else I'd change) and can moderate them sensibly.

    I accept I did this at first, but moderating while viewing at highest score first just doesn't make a lot of sense.

    Greg

  • Marketing claims that the rear colision thing is to avoid running into loved ones and other things in your driveway. I always wondered how long it would be before there was a court case because a lazy induhvidual backed up without looking relying completely on the back up sensor.

    I like the idea of an IR scope for night driving. However, I am concerned that some lazy goon will use it exclusively and not as an enhancement to normal light and night time driving. Stupid people amaze me.

  • This thing is pretty cool, but does anyone else get the impression that their car would turn into a deadly GameBoy? (Hey look, it's all black and white.. this isn't real life! :)
    Nice, but I wish car companies would focus more on the types of HUDs that fighter planes sport. My speedometer on an old car that I had broke for several months, and during that time, I was actually a safer driver due to the fact that I could keep my eyes on the road at all times. If I just had an HUD that would reflect my speedometer, tach, gas, etc... I'd be in heaven.

  • Well, are there any emiters that give off EM waves in this wavelenght, or would the thing just get really hot? I was wondering if you have something like this, if you could concentrate it and burn holes in distant things, sorta like what microwave laser could.

    (yes, I probably need to come back to earth, but shooting a turkey and cooking it all at the same time sounds kinda cool...)

  • Yes, Offtopic, but....

    The car programs on US television reported on this feature weeks ago, complete with a demo. It is curious that it took so long to make it on to Slashdot, and given the non-timeliness, that it was posted here. Slashdot is usually up with the hunt, with news breaking by the hour these days.

    Is this indicative that all (other) Slashdot readers are uberGeeks who drive clapped out Accords, and care not for technology that doesn't include an x86 chip? I'd like to think not! :-)
  • *shrug* I think it's a valid concern. (well, okay, that's partly cuz he agrees with me)

    I've often thought that if a car were able to drive itself ("computer, take me to grand central station". "Doh! I was speaking into the mouse"), that even if it were safer than the average human... The company who sells the car would get sued for every wreck the cars were involved in.

    If people have a chance to move the blame to someone/something else, they will, and few people are going to defend the machine, especially if a company is behind it.

  • If you had any idea how many drivers and pedestrians were killed each year by other drivers going too fast...

    They're not killed by drivers going to fast, they're killed by drivers going faster than that driver can handle.

    High speeds do not cause more accidents. That has been proven. However, high speeds cause the accidents that do occur to have a higher fatality rate.


    ---
  • The average pig idling behind a bridge embankment throws off a certain amount of heat, but you still might not notice him. However, that mug of hot coffee will certainly be visible in the infrared system, and speeders will slow down before he can tag 'em. Damn! Gotta leave the java at home. Where'd I put my radar jammer, anyway?

    I have a lot of respect for police officers when they're being useful. Protecting me from my own gas pedal is not useful.

    Useless prank: Use a torch to "heat-paint" obscene things on bridge embankments, etc. Totally invisible to the unaided eye, but Olds drivers will do a quick double-take as the concrete wall tells them things. Any northerners familiar with "heat cord" that you use to prevent ice dams on your roof in winter? Tape the stuff into patterns and find a source of power. :)

  • An interesting anecdote on early night vision (Score:3)

    by FallLine ( 12211 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @04:11PM (#1477996)
    Hi,

    My parents developed FLIR (night vision) for the military/aerospace in the 70s and 80s; I heard a few stories when I was growing up. One of which, is that during the vietnam war (I believe) the military was experimenting with some active night vision technology for foot soldiers. The way it worked was that they would have a soldier stand up with an infrared lamp flashlight type deal and illuminate in front, and the soldiers in his company would wear special filter glasses. Anyhow, it turns out that asian's can see just slightly more into the infrared than caucasians, such that lamp was visible to some of them. The developers never realized this and the soldiers discovered the hard way. It didn't take them long to realize that it was equivalent to wearing a big flashing sign saying "shoot me". Eventually the soldier's refused to carry the lamp, it took the brass/developers a couple weeks to find out though.
  • I can't speak for Ontario's weather, but in the mountains in the northeastern U.S. (and presumably any mountainous area) you can drive into 20' visibility fog in a matter of seconds. Sometimes the fog will come rolling across perpendicular to the highway which affords no chance of "seeing ahead." I believe the recent accident in PA that resulted in two deaths was that kind of situation: a fog bank rolled in very quickly, at which point the (professional) bus drivers tried to pull off the road and stop, but the fog was so dense, so quickly, that the buses collided with each other.
  • It's just a sheet of metal or fibreglass. It doesn't generate heat, and its temperature probably follows that of its surroundings closely. Thus you wouldn't expect it to generate a lot of infra-red energy compared to some other objects, such as living things.

    The idea is not to replace the driver's view of the road but rather to augment it. Road signs are already coated with a material which makes them reflect headlights, so they are highly visible already without any help.

  • Sue Cadillac for invasion of privacy (Score:3)

    by sreeram ( 67706 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:26AM (#1478021)
    Oh no! Now you can't even hide your *ahem* private endeavours behind the glare of your headlights. Thermal images, really! Reminds me of "R" in TWINE - must be a Y2K glitch!

    Sreeram.

  • Still, the driver is responsible (Score:3)

    by Gurlia ( 110988 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:27AM (#1478023)

    Cool device! I'd love to have a car with that thing. Even if it's just for the fun of it. Perhaps now people will stop swearing at drivers who shine their headlights into your face? :-)

    Still, a device is just a device... it's meant to help conscientious drivers drive better. But I doubt it would make that much a difference for careless drivers. Nothing can replace human responsibility, IMHO.

  • Check out the simulator! (Score:4)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:28AM (#1478028)
    The Cadilac site has a simulation showing just how night driving works. point your "shocked browswer" at:

    http://www.cadillac.com/te ch/nightmoves/see/shocked.html [cadillac.com]

    and enjoy!

  • >Stupid people amaze me. Yeah, like that guy who thinks that headlights can give you better vision than night vision. Military pilots can LAND using night vision. I believe the only problem is viewing signs.

    ---
    Military pilots have an entire array of informative widgits other than nightvission for use when landing.. not to mention the IR rig they have is ( I'm betting, send me a URL w/ proof if I'm wrong ) far more advanced than that of any publicly available car. ( barring special after market enchancements, sure anyone w/ a few mill can get there hands on a high grade IR setup and rig it to their car ). And you have to be liscensed and trained to fly by instrumentation before you can legaly do so.
    I as well fear the person who assumes they can drive with out paying attention to the "real" world.

    -Rogan C.
    uin: 4e8343

  • Agree on a standard whereby all IR headlights are polarized horizontally, and windshields polarized vertically. The reflected IR light will become depolarized, but direct IR light will still be polarized, and be filtered by oncoming cars' windshields.



    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • I got to play with what must have been the precursor to the Cadillac technology a few years ago, and it was QUITE IMPRESSIVE. At the time, I was working with the world's largest oil producer on an emergency oil spill response network. I participated in a drill where they tried several new things, including the "instant global network" I built for them, some new voice comms technology, and also a demo of the GM Hughes thermal vision system as it would be sold to law enforcement officials. (This could enhance security of the response site, since the enviros have been known to sabotage spill response operations - go figure...)

    It was a dreary winter day in Houston, about 50 degrees and misting - we were at the far end of the parking lot and the drizzle was producing a notable amount of fuzz when looking toward the main building. The GM guy fired up the vision system, and on a little 6" black and white monitor, we suddenly saw a bright white spot moving across the parking lot, attached to the right arm of a walking figure barely visible by eye through the mist. The GM guy grinned from ear to ear - what we were seeing was the heat signature of one of the project guys, and more importantly, his cup of hot coffee, which produced a white spot about a foot and a half in diameter!

    I got a fair amount of time in playing with the thing that day - it became quite obvious that there would be no effective way of hiding from such a system. Exposed skin stood out clearly from the environment at distances approaching 1/4 mile, and clothing scarcely attenuated the response, even leather jackets and such, which seemed to be about the most opaque. All this from a system which only cost about $6000 back then (c. 1995).

    All in all I came away quite impressed, and wouldn't want to have to sneak past someone equipped with that technology. I don't know if the system I saw was any better because it was intended for law enforcement, or if the Cadillac system is now as good, but it impressed the heck outta me, and I'm not easily impressed by technology.
  • That poses an interesting question - is there any way to hide from it? Most technologies have some sort of countermeasure - radar can be jammed, night vision is overly susceptible to bright flashes of light, which tend to cloud over the whole picture. But I don't think you can do much to escape from this system short of drenching yourself and slathering mud all over your body (another Predator reference). Even then, I'm not sure if it would work. I suppose you could exploit that coffee-cup flare that you saw, but on a much larger scale - get something hot enough where the flare would effectively shield you from pinpoint identification, etc. But even then they would just look up and, voila, you've illuminated yourself. I dunno - any thoughts? Could just use the EMP effect and fry everything within a couple miles. ;)
    --
    "Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
  • I'd rather have Y.T.'s Knight Visions, myself...

    and her 'poon, and the board, and the rest of the RadiKS gear.. hehe
  • Finally I can ignore those annoying people who drive with their high-beams on or use colored headlights.

    This system doesn't replace your windshield at all. Those people will still be able to blind you with their headlights. This thing only shows up in a small box below your normal eye level on your windshield.
  • Is it too damn hard to read the fucking article?

    Can't we look at the picture [cadillac.com] and see what it looks like?

    But no... we have to gibber on about how you could paint a Caddy black and put lasers on it and foil cops who have running engines. BLAH BLAH BLAH.

    READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE POSTING. YOUR IGNORANCE DOESN'T HELP ANYONE.

  • Hmmm now that I think about it... will this device really help when someone is shining their high-beams at you? What if it outshines the HUD display??? Just a thought...

  • Re:Remember Sonys Nightvision camera (Score:4)

    by Fastolfe ( 1470 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:32AM (#1478051)
    I sincerely doubt the resolution on this thing would allow you any remote abilities to see "through" materials. The person would have to be standing extremely close to the camera lens for a large enough image to appear on the screen, and if that were the case, you'd probably have just a fraction of a second to watch before you run them over.
  • I saw a commercial for this earlier last week - it looked like a small part of the windshield was changed to a HUD, so the rest was just normal vision. I think what this does is provide night-vision ahead of you, but allows regular vision to the sides and above.

    The only problem I see is that parked cars (i.e. turned off) would be invisible by this, so you're sort of screwed in that respect. =)


    Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
  • The system doesn't prevent headlights from blinding you. You can still look right at the oncoming car without obstruction. The advantage this provides is that instead of looking up into the glare, you can look down at the infrared image and still be able to see the edges of the road. Headlights don't obscure your vision when you view the area in front of you with this infrared system.
  • But the street sign shows up as black
    i dont think they are actually suggesting that you drive with no lights on. i believe they are just showing extremes for comparision. my understanding is that the night vision will be used in conjunction with your headlights. like a thermal overlay displayed through the hud.


    john
  • As I recall, military and commercial FLIR (Forward Looking thermal IR) can see through fog and smoke.

    I wonder if this will see hot engines through fog and help prevent chain collisions like the recent one outside of Denver?
    --

  • I'd like to see more features on my HUD. Current speed, direction, GPS coordinates, webserver statistics, fuel supply, days until y2k (BTW who compressed 'Year 2000' into 'Y2K'... isn't that kinda what got us into the problem?), maybe information on other objects within view such as the speed of the car in front of me superimposed above its image along with its current direction vector.
  • I rather wonder though what it looks like - engines generate lots of heat, plus in the winter you have all
    that heat energy in the passenger compartment - wouldn't that make it rather difficult to distinguish between two cars driving next to each other in different lanes?
    Hmmm, well... time will tell


    I wonder the same things. But I also wonder how this is going to help if it's mounted on the dash. I guess it's not that far to glance down just an inch, esp. since you're still looking at the road, but.. most people being used to looking at things through their own eyes and with "visible" light (not IR light), I'm going to also think it's going to be a bit of a hassle not only to use but to, first, get used to. I don't quite see how it's going to help _that_ much. We've been living w/out it thus far, and I don't think that the majority of accidents happen at night/because of driving at night. People just need to pay attention to what they're doing, use their headlights when needed, and stay off the road if they're unable to drive safely.

  • Thermal Imaging (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:39AM (#1478064)
    I worked with M60-A3 tanks about 11 years ago. They used Termal imaging for the targeting. You could see a rabit at 500 + meters. It could cut thru fog and dust. ( These sights were a major factors to the sucess of the tank battles In Iraq by Nato Forces.) You could even look at a woman and tell if she was on her period. If this is well designed it could greatly enhance driver safety. Then again how long will it be before some people stop using their headlights.
  • ...target-acquisition and designation sights, target range and velocity, fire-control radar, missile lock indicator...

    ...oh, wait, that's BMW.

    I'd hate to see Mr. Bond's auto-insurance premiums.
  • I've noticed many people saying that it will be hard to see some things with this system. What they don't seem to be thinking about is the fact that a HUD is overlayed above normal vision: you can still see anything you could before, just with an extra transparent layer in between.

    Also note the "not an actual representation" text on the page with comparisons of low/high beams to the night vision.
    ---

  • Missing the Point (Score:3)

    by melanarchy ( 109486 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:47AM (#1478069) Homepage
    Slashdot readers seem to be missing the poing of this device. It is not to circumvent being blinded by drivers with their brights on but rather it is to allow a driver to see past the range of his headlights, and even his brights, in case there are people or wildlife in the road ahead.

    The whole idea is for an early warning system to help prevent collisions with road side tire changers, deer, moose, et cetra.

    The small box at the base of the windshiled is not susposed to be your main focus at any point while you are driving.

    This system one a Grand Award from Popular Science for The Best of What's New [popsci.com].

    A great idea that is well implemeted only wish I could afford it. Perhaps their will be a third party that begins to install the system on any car sometime in the near future.
  • I've never used a HUD, so I have been wondering if there is any calibration required. Does it line up correctly no matter if you are 5' tall or 6'8" ?

  • Then we could use the night vision for what it was originally intended...
    ...targeting :)

    Brings new fun to "Dear Hunting" . .

    Now if they would only put them on tanks . .er ummm I mean SUVs. :)

  • Here is an article with pictures! (Score:3)

    by twjordan ( 88132 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @11:53AM (#1478076)
    I did a quick search on altavista and found this article with one picture [ocnow.com] and here [gm.com] is that piture a little bigger.
  • Just wait until you can get some generic system that can be retrofitted into any car. It looks like it should be doable. The system components, as described, are a camera mounted behind the car's grille, some processor that can be put anywhere, and some method of projection from the dashboard. It's just a matter of availability of the parts.
  • Sure nightvision is a great thing, but it's just a small step in innovation. The next generation will need auto target tracking, friend or foe detection, and voice activated autofire.

    They could even make them in different colors so they could sell to the Bloods *AND* the Crips.

    :)
    ~~~~~~~~~
    auntfloyd
  • I have dual feelings about this technology. On 1 hand, I do think that the Idea of it all is great. It is amazing the technologies that they can work with now.
    But on the second hand, I see it as yet another distraction in the car for the driver. Sure it will offer the driver better long range vision at night, but it is also 1 more thing for the driver to concetrate on. Personally I found that the digital gas and speed gauges were distracting enough...they are two "busy". I can just imagine how busy the display would be. I also think that drivers would get too dependant on the IR view.
  • This SJMercury article [sjmercury.com] has more info about the technology. Gives a good overview of the subject, and mentions Cadillac's system.

    Also, I've seen similar night vision setups sold by a number of dealers specializing in armored vehicles. I can't find any specific links, though.
  • I don't think this is all good, folks. I mean think about it - do you really want the people who drive Cadillacs to feel encouraged to come out driving at night? I've seen 4'2" Grannies park their SS Devilles into a tree in broad daylight, with no other cars on a straight piece of road. I don't exactly feel "safer" with this invention, for some reason.
    --
    "Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
  • It has always been my opinion that the coolest new technology is the one predicted in science fiction, whether it be television or print. And this new Infrared technology with a HUD display is just another example. Anyone remember the TV movie Knight Rider 2000? It came out a few years after the TV series ended. Well, the new model KITT had this exact technology.

    I'm probably the only one who knows what I'm talking, but all the same, I think it's pretty damn cool! If it weren't for the fact that I'd be constantly distracted by the HUD, I'd definitely want this as a feature in my next new car.
  • I agree that it could be a potential hazard. Military pilots require several training flights and a few hours of academics before they use their FLIR systems simply because no matter how good the system is, they aren't perfect and can "lie" to you. For example, a rather hot object might show up as a large blob on an IR screen even though it might only be something small. In addition, the boresights of the FLIR camera will never be spot-on to the driver's line of sight through their eyes, so the image displayed by the camera will not always line up with the real world.

    I honestly think there's going to be a lawsuit concerning these thing because someone is going to run into someone or something because they followed the displayed image instead of using their own eyes, or they're going to get confused when their eyes disagree with the displayed HUD image and they freeze up in confusion and cause an accident.

    Highly skilled military pilots with extremely good reflexes and eyesight have been misled into accidents and collisions because of similiar equipment, so I fully expect there to be accidents when the average driver starts using them.

    FWIW, I'm a USAF F-15E pilot and have used FLIR systems for 3 years. Even with the latest military technology, these artificial vision systems will sometimes mislead you and they can cause accidents if the driver/pilot is not aware or alert enough to make sense of the information.
  • Cars sold in the US suffer from crappy DOT-approved lighting. If only we could get Euro spec lighting approved in the US, then we would not have to resort to night vision to see what's ahead of us in the dark! I converted to european lighting on my 1985 VW GTI, and it is absolutely awesome! The kit that I used comes with 7 inch round H4 headlights (same as used on the european GTIs) and H3 fog lamps. I can run 90/130W H4 bulbs without blinding oncoming drivers - way cool! It takes a bit of rewiring, though :)

  • FYI (Score:5)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @12:19PM (#1478095) Homepage
    A lot of people seem to be confusing night vision and thermal imaging. This system does not replace headlights, and isn't night vision. In other words, it does not magnify the intensity of light electronically and spit it out onto a CRT (although wouldn't it be nice to have no more streetlights or headlights ever! no light pollution, no more having to drive 200 mi. to watch the Leonids). All this is is a simple infra-red (heat sensing) mechanism. It can pick up things that would usually be out of the range of your headlights, provided there is some sort of temperature contrast. Typically, this would be a warm person walking by the side of the road at night, or a deer, or freshly wrecked cars, etc. I guess you could use it to see a really cold person on a hot day too ;) Think "Predator" with his mask on, sans the hydraulic hair and cool breathing noises. Same thing, except from what I have seen they don't colorize the picture so it's all one monochromatic scene with varying tints signifying different heat levels. Living in Los Angeles, this is pretty worthless (Although Jason Priestley might argue), but I'm sure someone, somewhere will benefit from it.
    --
    "Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
  • One big problem will be boresight alignments. Unless the sensor is placed on the roof near where the windshield meets it, there will usually be at least 3 ft difference in the line of sight of the driver and the sensor. This means that the image will not always line up with what the driver sees with his own eyes. I wonder how they plan on dealing with the double images drivers will be seeing, or if they're not going to have it as a see-thru hud, rather a small opaque display at the base of the windscreen. Either way, matching up the display with the real world will take some of the driver's attention away from driving, and lots of drivers have enough problems just keeping on the road let alone looking at some camera view too.
  • Also,

    http://www.cadillac.com/t ech/nightmoves/see/notshocked.html [cadillac.com]

    for the plugin-free.

    --

  • um (Score:2)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    Why in the world would you get penalized for having something that increases your vision? If anything, I can see NOT having this kind of device as being grounds for liabilty.

    --

  • This will be a great aid for places such as Northern Maine, where it's generally considered unsafe to drive at night, let one get run over by a moose. (for those of you city folk who don't understand how it works: you don't run over the moose, the moose runs over you. Or at least just stands there. Either way, the moose is the one that's going to walk away.) Wonder what its range is . . .
  • I've seen 4'2" Grannies park their SS Devilles into a tree in broad daylight, with no other cars on a straight piece of road.

    For this problem new Cadillacs have a sonic rangefinder in the rear bumper, and LED's on the dash that tell you how close you are in back. Of course it is wrong to look at the dashboard while you are backing up, and most of the 4'2" grannies won't use it properly anyhow, but it's a good start.

    The other great piece of tech on Caddys: laser raindrop counters to determine when to wipe the windshield.

  • Imagine if Hemos had misspelled that one little (okay, upper-case) letter. Slashdotters everywhere would beseige the poor NightVision people with flames accusing them of being M$ p2wn$.

    Just a Scrabble-oriented kind of gal,
    Sumana

  • Something nobody has mentioned (at least not when I read through everything), but which is important: the Cadillac system only points directly forward. So the moment you start to go around any kind of a curve, it only tells you whats off to the side of the road on the wrong side. The correct way to do it is for the camera angle to change in real time according to the angle of the steering wheel and your velocity. So as you curve to the right, it would angle to the right to point at where you're actually going to go (and maybe a little further to the right, since often what's critical is what's on the edge of the road). Added cost? Yes. Expensive? Probably not significantly more than the current system (assuming the camera fits in a small housing). But _so_ much more useful!
  • is it just me... or did moderators rate any comment on this story with the slightest hint of humor at 3, or if you lack humor, but arn't an idiot get 3 for insightful or interesting.

    For god's sake, a url to a shockwave page that is terribly done, and doesn't even correctly represent the device (it shows a small box, it doesn't cover the entire windshield) got a +5 ...

    Read through the +3's... you will see my point. 80% of them deserve to stay at 1, I hope I get to metamoderate some of those moderators.

    After this story is done everyone and their mother will get a +1 for their karma of 10 or higher, except me, because this will be rated flame bait... hold on! I have an idea... a slight hint of humor: A mushroom goes into a bar right? He goes up to the bartender and says "hey bartender, give me a beer." The bartender says "I'm sorry, we don't serve your kind here." Mushroom says "why not?! I'm a fungi!." ... get it? fungi == fun guy! hahaha! +3 for funny! maybe +3 for interesting or insightful, this will get a +6, wait thats not even possible, so thats funny, I should get moderated even higher! WOOHOO!

    In short: moderators: instead of being so happy you have a point or two to spend that you pick the best of the 20 comments, wait till the story has 200, then read the articles 95% of the moderators ignore, and give the one there that REALLY deserved a +4 or +5 a point, and ignore the bad shockwave link.

  • After taking a look at the Night Vision feature, I find that it's much better than using high-beam headlights to illuminate the road ahead of you.

    On the subject of high beams, let me be the first to say that I absolutely abhor them. People seem to think that their right to see the road should overshadow mine. Sure, they can see everything ahead of them, but I sure can't! It's much worse when an SUV comes up behind you (even with the low beams on). The light reflects off my mirrors and blinds me (even with the rear-view mirror in the "night" position). Some people just don't know how to drive...

    Problem is, every time I flash my headlights to tell someone to turn theirs down, they slow down instead, thinking that there's a speed trap ahead. And I'm still blinded. Go figure.

    When did people stop taking responsibility for their actions? When the first SUV was created.



    awkwardone
  • Get a black caddie, tint the windoze, paint over the chrome bumpers black as well.

    Kick this sucker on at night, kill your lights. You're pretty much free to haul balls @ 150 if you want.

    Sure, if you blast past a cop his radar'll pick you up. But once you're outa the range of his headlights you're pretty much invisible to him unless the highway is really well-lit (most aren't) or there's a really bright full moon.

    Meanwhile, you just tracked the cop with your radar detector. So you know to pull off into the next rest area, wait a few minutes, then head back out @ 70 or so with your lights on like a good little motorist.

    Of course, I'd want to do it with night vision goggles so I could see all around the car in whatever direction I looked instead of just what's in that little HUD.

    Hmmm, If people started doing this the roads'd get quite a bit more dangerous. Probably it's a good thing that the geezers most likely to own caddies rarely drive at night, and hardly ever above 45 when they DO drive.

    But what happens when this thing gets put on a Porche???


    john
  • Seeing how most responses to this have been moderated down as "offtopic", I invite you to where a discussion about moderation *ISN'T* offtopic...

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid= moderation [slashdot.org]

    (psst. Moderators: don't moderate this down as off-topic, so you can limit the number of other people that you would have to also mod down as off-topic. just a suggestion..)


    i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.

  • Pricing (Score:3)

    by Alan Baker ( 22111 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @02:01PM (#1478156) Homepage
    Out of curiosity I checked pricing. I picked the DHS model (Night Vision is not available on all models)

    I also included some of the other features that most geeks would be interested in (CD-ROM Navigation, ect).

    Cadillac DHS Base MSRP $ 44,700*

    Individual Options:

    1. On-Board CD-ROM Based Navigation Display with Bose® 4.0 High Performance Music System Consists of: Six-Disc CD Changer (located in glove box) $ 1,995
    2. Radio - AM Stereo/FM Stereo, Cassette Tape and MiniDisc, Weatherband, Digital Signal Processing, Radio Data System, & Theftlock; Eight-Speaker Bose® Acoustic System $ 300
    3. Safety / Security Package Consists of: StabiliTrak, Ultrasonic Rear Parking Assist, Garage Door Opener - 3-Channel Programmable $ 895
    4. Night Vision $ 1,995
    5. Adaptive Seats, Driver and Front Passenger $ 995
    Destination Charge $ 670
    Total MSRP $ 51,550*
  • The lights aren't actually halogen lights, but so-called "high-intensity discharge" lighting. It's basically a xenon arc lamp. Xenon arcs are also found in camera flash units--and the light seems subjectively to be the same color to me. I don't know if this is true of all HID-equipped cars or not, but the one that I drive has a fairly elaborate electronic leveling mechanism designed to keep the light out of the eyes of oncoming drivers; you can actually see the lights adjust up and down slightly in order to compensate for the effects of acceleration and deceleration.

  • Speaking of cops... (Score:3)

    by Krimsen ( 26685 ) on Sunday December 05, 1999 @02:20PM (#1478170)
    Speaking of cops, this should do wonders for speeders trying to avoid tickets, since when cops hide, they always have their engines running. This should make it easy to spot them a nice long way off - even before a radar detector would warn you. Of course, unless you are on the highway, you might get a lot of false alarms from patrons in store parking lots, etc...

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