The See-Through System: From implementation to test-drive

Cooperative awareness in vehicular networks is probably the killer application for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications that cannot be matched by infrastructure-based alternatives even when disregarding communication costs. New and improved driver assistance systems can be introduced by extending their reach to sensors residing in neighboring vehicles, such as windshield-installed cameras. In previous work, we defined theoretical foundations for a driver assistance system that leverages on V2V communication and windshield-installed cameras to transform vision-obstructing vehicles into transparent tubular objects. We now present an implementation of the actual See-Through System (STS), where we combine the communication aspects with the control and augmented reality components of the system. We present a validation methodology and test the system with multiple vehicles on a closed road segment. This evaluation shows that the STS is able to increase the visibility of drivers intending to overtake, thus increasing the safety of such critical maneuvers. It also shows that Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) provides the required latency for this delay-critical inter-vehicle communication, which could hardly be guaranteed with infrastructure-based communication technologies.