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Similar to Passenger Vehicles (PV), Commercial Vehicles and Trucks (ComVecT) use standard rearview mirrors to improve the visibility of the surrounding environment and facilitate a safer maneuvering of large vehicles. Standard rearview mirrors used in ComVecT are large and flat to cover outside areas as specified in theFMVSS 111 standard, or other requirements like ECE-R46. In addition, ComVecT are also equipped with optional mirrors with different Field of View (FoV), such as wide angle, look-down cross proximity, and front mirrors. These optional mirrors cover wider or specific areas around the vehicle which might not be possible otherwise with standard mirrors only. While these mirrors tend to enhance the visibility around the truck, they create undesirable blind zones to the driver. These blind zones can be gaps between the direct vision through the windows and indirect vision provided by the mirror.

Current market trend indicates an increased interest in replacing mirrors by camera monitor systems (CMS) to reduce CO2 emissions and to improve visibility of surrounding environment to the driver. A CMS is an advanced system composed of an electronic imager, a display, and an intelligent electronic control unit intended to provide at least the same level of functionality of legally prescribed mirrors. A CMS must also take into consideration several factors in the designed system to satisfy an overall system magnification and system resolution. Some factors pertain to the camera, and display inside the cockpit, but some other are related to the physical constraints of the human operator, i.e. visual acuity, height, etc. In this paper, we demonstrate that there exists a fundamental nonlinear equation for a given CMS encompassing factors that influence the performance of the system.