#262: Autopacity

Whoever thought that wrapping the windscreen of vehicles all the way round was a good idea?

Now that we are in the era of experimenting seriously with autonomous vehicles, do we really need to stare at the road through a glass bowl?

Today’s invention is a roadgoing vehicle bodyshell with no windows. The driver, if there is one, would see only a wraparound image of the outside world projected onto the inside surface via a redundant array of high-quality cameras.

A shell such as this would provide ample room for internal wiring and airbags, hugely increased impact resistance and improved visibility for a wider range of body sizes (with no pillars to get in the way).

An additional benefit would be that all roadsigns could be removed (they deface the visual environment anyway) and replaced by icons injected into the display at GPS-determined locations.