Remember the scene in Tomorrow Never Dies where James Bond is being chased by the bad guys and he drives his rental car remotely from the back seat with his cellphone? Great idea, great scene, completely ridiculous … or is it? Well, Sony wanted to see just how responsive the Exmor sensors and the Bravia Engine displays of the Xperia Arc smartphones. So, they used them to drive a car with no other means of seeing outside. The result is a rather wild video.
Now they didn’t actually use the Arc as a remote control device. Face it, that’s more the Xperia Play’s style. But what they did do is completely black out the windows and forward and rear windshields except for two small holes which fit a pair of Xperia Arc Smartphones. Then, placing the phones in video mode, the driver had a stereo view of the outside world with which to drive over a closed course. And we’re not talking a race track either, this was the back woods, a deserted town near a cliff face. The drive then had to navigate using only the stereo video images he saw on the phones.
It’s both an impressive and intense video to watch as the driver has his work cut out for him keeping the car steady in real time while relying on the images shown to him by both phones. Of course, the driver is a professional who is trained to deal with test track issues, but this idea not only pushes his skills to the limit, but it also shows just how responsive the Exmor sensor and Bravia Engines are inside the Xperia Arc. But it’s also important to remember that Sony doesn’t want you to take your Arc and try this on your own, it’s a professional, closed course, controlled conditions, yada yada yada. And even though it isn’t 007, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.
You can watch the video in glorious HD over at the Sony Ericsson website.
