Of course, you could have such a mirror already. It would just be
curved enough to cover the blind spot to the rear and left of the
driver. But that curve would also distort the image, leaving the driver
uncertain about the location of objects in the mirror. Thankfully,
Drexel University mathematician R. Andrew Hick’s patented new design
solves that problem:
Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of about
45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver’s
side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the
perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in
Hicks’s mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are
barely detectable. [...]
“Imagine that the mirror’s surface is made of many smaller mirrors
turned to different angles, like a disco ball,” Hicks said. “The
algorithm is a set of calculations to manipulate the direction of each
face of the metaphorical disco ball so that each ray of light bouncing
off the mirror shows the driver a wide, but not-too-distorted, picture
of the scene behind him.”
Hicks noted that, in reality, the mirror does not look like a disco
ball up close. There are tens of thousands of such calculations to
produce a mirror that has a smooth, nonuniform curve.
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