Toyota Wants to Make Its Pillars Appear Transparent

Toyota has filed a patent application for technology that would make an object appear transparent.

The application was filed on June 17, 2016 and was recently published on August 10, 2017 and details “apparatuses and methods for making an object appear transparent.” The goal is to make the pillars appear transparent on Toyota’s vehicles, making it easier to see what’s lurking ahead and helping eliminate blind spots. More specifically, the technology makes use of cloaking devices to make the pillars appear transparent, although Toyota’s approach is a bit different than what’s been shown off previously by other companies.

“Studies on cloaking devices that appear to make a pillar of a vehicle transparent have been published,” the patent application reads. “Such studies disclose the use of metamaterials or the use of video cameras in combination with a display screen to allow an occupant of a vehicle to ostensibly “see” through the vehicle pillar, thereby reducing blind spots in the vehicle. However, metamaterials and video technology use complicated material designs and equipment.”

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So instead, Toyota details a cloaking device consisting of an object-side and an image-side, a cloaking region (CR) boundary plane with an outward facing mirror surface and an inward facing opaque surface, a CR that’s at least partially bounded by the inward facing opaque surface of the CR boundary plane, and a half-mirror spaced apart and generally parallel to the outward facing mirror surface.

Essentially, the cloaking device would be used to cloak parts of the vehicle such as the A-, B-, C-, or D-pillars and remove a blind spot caused by those pillars.

It might sound wild, but recently Toyota has been putting a focus on slim pillar designs. In fact, the recent Lexus UX Concept features an A-pillar designed to look transparent.

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