Wrap-Around Video Technology (Thanks to Fujitsu)
In a moment of startling innovative clarity, Fujitsu has done something fairly interesting: They have developed a technology, largely aimed at cars, that would allow a driver to see a 360-degree view of the space around their car.
Specifically, this is a video technology that takes pictures from around an object (in this case a car), and composites the images in much the same way that Google Street View does, through in real time and with the ability to display at a given angle to increase visibility for a driver.
Fujitsu envisions this technology integrated into most cars to help drivers park their cars and merge into traffic, but there are questions as to whether or not it would make a crash more likely while merging just because drivers would have to adapt to a new system.
However, this is pretty cool technology and I'm sure there are lots of other applications that we can think of for a chip that can composite four streams of images into improvised video... Maybe some kind of helmet for bikers with an eyepiece? Pretty expensive, but pretty awesome. Plus I could listen to my iPod and write my bike at the same time.