How does the “overhead car view” camera work?
In: Technology
Math. Lots and lots of math.
It’s got cameras facing in every direction. You can use that video feed and do a whole shit ton of math to build a 3d computer model of the space around the car. Detecting objects, working out their distance and rough size, etc. You also use the video feed to texture it, so you identify the area that’s the asphalt and use the video you have of the asphalt to make it look the same. You can see something that works kinda like that [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0uP4ZiQ2zc). You then do a shit ton more math to extrapolate some of the things you can’t see. For example if you can only see one side of a nearby car, you can assume that the top it probably the same colour and fairly flat, and the otherside of the car is going to be pretty symmetrical. So you use that to fill in the bits it can’t see where needed.
Once you’ve built that 3d model, you can then do stuff with it. In this case they take a prebuilt model of the car (or a car if it’s a cheaper system), and place it in the 3d model where the actual car should be. You can also put an artificial camera in it, and move it wherever, and then show the model from that perspective in exactly the same way you can use free camera mode in a video game.
It hardly produces a 100% faithful copy of the area around the car, but all it really needs to do is give you enough visual data to figure out where you are and make sure that distances are accurate
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