'Transparent' car which projects outside world on interior is developed to help drivers with parking

James Bond once drove an invisible car in a high-speed car race across a frozen lake.

Now a car akin to the remarkable vehicle could soon be driven for real.

A ‘transparent' vehicle that projects the outside world on its interior has been developed by Japanese researchers. 

James Bond drives the car which can be made invisible in Die Another Day - a vehicle akin to the 'transparent' car that is being developed

It is being designed in Tokyo to help drivers with parking, projecting a panoramic view of the area behind the car onto the rear seats.

The view would include children, animals, or objects such as bollards that may be invisible below the rear window.

Drivers who struggle to parallel park may find this invention particularly useful.

The car appears transparent from the inside, allowing drivers to 'see through' the rear bodywork.

In the James Bond film Die Another Day, the spy's Aston Martin Vanquish is made invisible by replicating the background using a light-emitting polymer skin.

The feature, accompanied with automatic guns that popup from the bonnet cooling vents and spikes on the tyres, proves very useful during a chase with a Jaguar XK-R on the frozen lakes of Iceland.

But this real device is a little less advanced.

The way it works is two cameras on the boot lid capture a full view of the scene behind the car.

The car appears transparent from the inside, allowing drivers to 'see through' the rear bodywork (pictured is the race scene in the Bond film)

The Sunday Times reports that the images are combined by computer and reflected onto the seats to create the illusion that the back of the car is transparent when looked at from the driver's seat.

Masahiko Inami, from Tokyo's Keio University, said, as reported in the newspaper: 'The driver will feel like he's driving a glass car.'

Mr Inami works at the university where the technology was developed and fitted to a Toyota Prius.

A Japanese car manufacturer is said to be already working with the laboratory to put the technology into production.

Other ideas being developed by researchers include making other parts of the car transparent.

This encompasses a prototype transparent door that would enable lorry drivers to see if a cyclist pulled up alongside them at a junction.

This could potentially prove extremely useful in reducing road deaths.

Research last year by Accident Exchange found that 200,000 accidents are caused by reversing vehicles each year in the UK, with the majority of them being the fault of the driver who was travelling backwards.