New Odyssey with Multi-View Camera
Honda is debuting a new version of the venerable Odyssey mini van in Japan next month complete with a “multi-view camera system” developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. The unit will afford drivers with a 360 degree view of the area around the van on a single display.
They’ve mounted four CCD cameras on the front grill, side mirrors, and to the top rear. The resulting captured images are processed through an electronic control unit and put up on the monitor for the navigation system. Corrections are made for distortion, color, brightness, and other stuff to synthesize one overall image.
The cameras, also a Matsushita product, have view angles of 180 degrees on the horizontal and 120 degrees on the vertical. According to the report over at TechOn, “a near-infrared LED is mounted only in the side view mirror on the passenger side. When the near-infrared LED is lit, the driver can see the image in the passenger-side side view mirror on the monitor at night or in dark areas such as multi-level parking garages.”
There’s a much lengthier explanation of how the whole things works as well as comparison remarks for the similar Nissan unit. (Complete with photos.) Being an Odyssey driver myself, I can truthfully say the vans are not plagued with blind spots, in fact the visibility is remarkably good, but I wouldn’t turn down one of these systems if I could get my hands on it.