GM Has New Augmented Reality Aided Heads Up Display For Cars [Automobiles]
March 18 2010 Categorized Under: Misc Tags; Augmented reality, automobiles, cars, GM, HuD, research No Commented
There’s nothing like a hi-tech car to get people interested in your ride. Whilst we have a seen a lot of convincing and not-so convincing such contraption in the movies, we are fast moving towards a future where a lot of those things will become regular sights. One of them is the heads up display for cars. HuD’s themselves are nothing new. They have been around for a while, displaying crucial information for drivers so that they don’t have to look down. But now GM has gone one step further and made an augmented reality Heads up Display that can display much more than the gas level and speed.
This new display incorporates older features like night vision and adds in a lot of new things. For example, during low visibility days, the display will actually paint the road lines on the screen with ultraviolet lasers. The sophisticated system will also read road signs for you so that you can navigate better. It also has better night vision and uses all of these things to identify on-road obstacles.
As you can understand, this system is all about keeping the driver and the vehicle safe. The system looks to be very precise and effective. The whole thins is done through front mounted sensors that pick up a multitude of things and driver facing cameras that decide where the head is and how it is positioned. That last thing helps the system to enhance the display of the augmented reality layer.
There’s a lot of future for this and in combination with advanced navigation features, displays like these could completely revolutionize the driving experience, while also reducing accidents. Cars and navigation systems have in fact become intelligent enough to completely automate the vehicle and automatically make it’s way through traffic and reach the destination safely. Even something as complex as parking can be done automatically. The main reason why these things are not released fully to the cars is because of the way we’d react to the complete loss of control. It won’t be pretty.
So even as research progresses fast, the manufacturers are bringing it to us bit by bit. This system from GM is definitely one of the most advanced car technologies till date and they have worked really hard on it. But the company is not saying anything about whether there is a chance of this reaching actual cars that will come to the market.
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