GM takes a new perspective on Heads Up Display
by: Bradley Wint on March 19th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Heads Up Display technology has always been an innovative tool in assisting drivers on the road. Whether the HUD software shows your your speed or helps you determine the speed limit in an unknown area, it has proven to be quite useful. GM’s R&D department has taken this tech to another level though, by developing HUD software to help you drive in the worst of conditions (e.g. torrential rain or heavy snow and so on).
GM has partnered with several universities to develop an HUD that can actually detect the different road marking (e.g. middle lines, road edge, objects, etc.) The new screens will be lined with transparent phosphors which emit visible light when excited by a light beam. This basically allows for the HUD to be displayed on the screen itself, making the enhanced experience look more accurate. It also enables the driver to get a wider perspective on the environment compared to older HUDs.
On that foggy day, maybe worsened by sleet or snow, the enhanced vision system could combine night vision with the head-up system to identify and highlight the precise location of animals roaming along the side of the road that could have avoided recognition with the naked eye.
“We’re looking to create enhanced vision systems,” says Thomas Seder, group lab manager-GM R&D. His team is working with Carnegie Mellon University and The University of Southern California, as well as other institutions, to create a full windshield head-up system leveraging night vision, navigation and camera-based sensor technologies to improve driver visibility and object detection ability.
“Let’s say you’re driving in fog, we could use the vehicle’s infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could ‘paint’ the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is,” Seder said.
Initial results have proven to be quite effective versus Heads Down Display and GM has announced that drivers can see this bit of tech in the near future. Check out some pics below.
[Source: GM]
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