Never said the concept of a dital license plate was a smart one. I thought it was nuts when I read about it years ago, lol!
Never seen one and way too costly. My point was most are not too aware of digital plates for reasons you said yourself.
Good question. It's just a postcard with the link to renew your tag. I suppose they could email out notification... or a calendar notification would suffice for most here.
I'm guessing that the cameras are there in order to facilitate hitching a trailer and that there are two in order that the system can actually measure the positions of objects in 2 dimensions for enhanced driver guidance displays. Naturally, such a system would be designed to measure distances close to the trailer best. For two cameras spaced a foot apart the 2DRMS DOP (RMS Geometric Dilution of Precision) is as shown in the contour plot below.
Good analysis. While the F350 had a single camera that worked great for connecting trailers, it was mounted above the hitch about in the center of the tailgate. This allowed you to almost see from directly above the hitch making eyeballing it simple. I could see having a couple of cameras beside the license plate as necessary to make hitching up capable of being fully automated. Are we sure those are cameras and not some kind of radar or other distance finders?I'm guessing that the cameras are there in order to facilitate hitching a trailer and that there are two in order that the system can actually measure the positions of objects in 2 dimensions for enhanced driver guidance displays. Naturally, such a system would be designed to measure distances close to the trailer best. For two cameras spaced a foot apart the 2DRMS DOP (RMS Geometric Dilution of Precision) is as shown in the contour plot below.
All numbers are in units of camera separation. Thus the cameras are located at x = ± 0.5 but the contours for x < 0 are not shown as they are symmetrical with the ones for x > 0. If the cameras are a foot apart all the numbers on the plot are in feet and if, for example an object were measured to be about 1.6' to the left of centerline and 1.5 feet behind we would be on the contour labeled 10 which would correspond to 10 feet 2DRMS position uncertainty per radian angular measurement error. The camera measures the angle to an object within a particular pixel by taking the arctangent of distance of the pixel from the center of the CCD divided by the focal length of the lens. Supposing the CCD to measure 10 mm and to have 1992 pixels along that dimension the pixels would be 0.005 mm apart. Supposing, further a 10 mm focal length each pixel would correspond to about atan(.005/10) = 0.0005 or half a milliradian and we might expect angular error measurement errors of about 1 mrad. Thus, the contour labeled 10 corresponds to 2DRMS error of 0.01 foot or 0.12 inches. That means that the object is probably in a circle of radius 0.12" centered at the estimated coordinates if they are near x = 1.6' and y = 1.5'. Pretty good.
But they get better as you get the ball closer to the centerline of the vehicle. From the plot we see that at a foot and a half behind the trailer the accuracy is 3.7/10 times better (.12*3.7/10 = 0.04") than when off axis by a foot and a half. The "sweet spot" is indicated by the blob at x = 0, y = 0.352 where the 2DRMSE is 0.917 feet. At 10 yards for cameras spaced a foot the DOP would be about 1272 feet/rad so for that same camera angular measurement accuracy of 0.001 rad the position accuracy would be about 12.7 feet. Not too optimal for this purpose but when trying to align a trailer hitch we don't care about 30 feet back, We care about up close.
The conclusion is that, whatever their intendended purpose may be, two cameras a foot apart would be great for trailer attachment assistance.
I don't think we're SURE about ANYTHING on the CT right now.... ;-)
That's true about a lot of the CT, that's for sure!
