Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car’s windshield. All it requires is some relatively inexpensive and readily available tech available at an electronics store. Gizmodo reports: Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle’s windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.

Gassler’s invention isn’t quite ready to be installed in vehicles across the country just yet, but the technologies already exist that would allow it to be implemented in cars without serving as a distraction to the driver. Short-throw projectors could be installed at the base of the passenger side windshield pillar to create the image without having to worry about the passenger blocking the beam. And many cars have already replaced side mirrors with cameras, or include nearly invisible cameras in the rear for safely backing up, so adding one more on the side of the pillar would presumably be trivial. Gassler won the top prize for her invention at this year’s Society for Science and the Public’s Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – 14-Year-Old Inventor Solves Blind Spots