Stereo Reconstruction for Improved Automotive Safety

In a recent news release, Toyota describes a new safety system that implements numerous computer vision technologies.

These techniques include(from the article):

"...a newly developed stereo camera to detect pedestrians and support emergency collision evasion maneuvers by the driver. ...three-dimensional object detection information from the stereo camera to detect not only vehicles and obstacles, but also pedestrians. A near-infrared projector located in the headlights supports nighttime detection... The system retracts the seatbelts and warns the driver when it determines a high possibility of a collision. If the driver does not brake, the Pre-crash Brakes are applied to reduce collision speed."

This leads to the question of how long until we have black box recorders in every automobile. Continuous data acquisition from this many sensors would certainly help with accident reconstruction.