from the Keep-Informed-Through-Tweets dept.
The Register and The Verge are carrying a story on NAVDY (Warning: SNvertisemnt), a Heads Up Display (HUD) that links with your cell phone to keep your eyes glued to the road.
The technology projects a transparent image directly within your field of view that appears to float six feet in front of your screen. The display can show instructions, incoming calls and the car's speed. You communicate with the Navdy using voice and gestures and the Navdy has noise cancellation and wide angle sensors to make this work.
Navdy works with navigation apps such as Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions, and music apps such as Spotify, Pandora, iTunes Music and Google Play Music. The device can read aloud or display notifications from text messages or social media apps.
So far, all the information about the product, both by the reviewers and the company's own site concentrate on the handling of social media and entertainment, with very little addressing the navigation part, other than the mention of Google's Turn by Turn directions.
To my way of thinking none of this is that helpful, and merely provides another way to maintain the constant flow of social media with a thin veneer of navigation as justification, and wrapping it all in dubious claims of safety. (Even citing fighter pilots use of HUDs in their video, neglecting to mention children don't chase balls into the path of fighter aircraft).
Some high end cars have HUD displays, but for the most part they focus their efforts on keeping you from having to look at the dashboard rather than having to look art your phone, and they avoid being the center of your attention versus trying to capture your attention.
Should the object of a HUD be to keep us in touch, or help us drive?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 19 2014, @11:34AM
Well, they only do it once, anyway.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15 2014, @03:02AM
PqhIul risnxledabkg [risnxledabkg.com], [url=http://weuhfzomkcbm.com/]weuhfzomkcbm[/url], [link=http://lsxxwpynthjh.com/]lsxxwpynthjh[/link], http://ladoffqqmiub.com/ [ladoffqqmiub.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:01PM
How quickly can this be adopted across the board. It would appear to me that it only has a limited life-span when the prospect of driver-less cars is becoming a reality. When you are no longer driving, you no longer need the HUD. I'm not going to change my current car for one with a HUD, but I would change for a driver-less car.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:18PM
On the contrary, that's when you will need it the most. Or so Google will say (otherwise how do you think it will manage to spa... err, pardon me... to deliver you information relevant to your location?)
(HUD - heads up display. Essentially, its a display and it will stay a display no matter what one is going to show on it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RaffArundel on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:55PM
Assuming this is the same one I saw yesterday - you don't change your car you plop this (or Garmin's or any of the aftermarket HUD toys) on your dash, plug it into your AUX power port and run it with BT from your phone. Think of it more like GPS before they started showing up in-dash.
As for the TFS's question: the only job you have when behind the wheel is DRIVING. Not reading your texts, not putting on make-up, not emphatically talking with your hands to your freakin' passenger. While there aren't laws preventing HUDs I believe there are laws preventing certain types of content being displayed to the driver. While obviously, I would hope, video/general web browsing would be out - I was under the impression all the in-dash email/text systems had to actually read them to you. Anyone know the typical rules for these things?
(Score: 2) by WillR on Tuesday August 19 2014, @03:19PM
"When you buy one, slip the installer an extra $20 and he'll disable the park brake interlock so you can enter an address on the navigation system (or text or watch movies) with the car in motion."
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:38PM
"The only job you have when behind the wheel is DRIVING. Not reading your texts, not putting on make-up..."
Agreed. I like the idea of HUDs for the prospect of having speed limit and simple "left/right" arrows (from NAV) displayed as if they were signs on the road in front of me. That is useful and could make driving safer.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by carguy on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:59PM
Just came across this overview paper on hands free vs. hand held phones and distracted driving, with many citations,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022437509000292 [sciencedirect.com]
Found through this index page on distracted driving research, National Safety Council,
http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/DistractedDrivingResearchandStatistics.aspx [nsc.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 19 2014, @09:17PM
OTOH: Four more:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hold-the-phone-new-study-says-talking-and-driving-not-as-dangerous-as-we-thought/ [digitaltrends.com]
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/didnt-californias-handheld-cell-phone-ban-reduce-motor-accidents-86187/ [psmag.com]
http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/car-crash-risks-aplified-dialing-texting-reaching-cell-phone-article-1.1564313 [nydailynews.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2387903/Using-mobile-phone-car-does-NOT-make-driving-dangerous-claims-study.html [dailymail.co.uk]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @01:13PM
Is this thing physically attached to the dash or is it designed to simply slam into the drivers face at 60 mph during an accident?
Just ask'n.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday August 19 2014, @01:27PM
Looks like the latter.
(Score: 1) by Adamsjas on Tuesday August 19 2014, @03:52PM
Wouldn't it tend to go forward?
Besides, your face will be "protected" by the steering wheel embedded in your forehead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:55PM
> Is this thing physically attached to the dash or is it designed to simply slam
> into the drivers face at 60 mph during an accident?
Related to that, I have a garmin GPS unit that I try to keep right on the dashboard in front of my steering wheel - basically the same place as the navdy is in their video. I couldn't use a suction-cup windshield mount because then it is too far forward and out of arm's reach (and california has a law against windshield-mounting anything, a stupid law but there it is). I tried garmin's friction mount and it was no good, friction just wasn't enough to keep it in place when going around corners.
So I ripped off the friction pad and duct-taped a rare-earth magnet in its place. My plan was to super-glue a similar magnet to the dash where I wanted it to sit. Instead I found out that there is a lot of ferrous metal right below the dashboard cover and I don't need a 2nd magnet. I can sit the unit on top of the dash and it just "sticks" - no problems even in the sharpest turns and slamming on the brakes.
So far I haven't been able to find any commercially made magnetic mounts. I've seen some that are two parters - you have to glue something to the dashboard first, like I was planning on originally. But nothing like my self-contained model.
Anyways, that's my story and if any of you are looking to get their gps/phone right up close on your dashboard but don't want one of those jerry-rigged mounts, just get a super magnet and see if it will stick to your dash on its own.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 19 2014, @01:31PM
The finances of this are peculiar. Drivers are slightly expensive but "phone operators" are cheap. I would be surprised if it costs more than minimum wage for a personal assistant aka a servant, assuming no family members can be press ganged into working. Mostly I use my wife as a copilot.
So you've got a big-ish capital expense plus time and cognitive load and storage and usability issues, vs just having a cheap widely available standard issue human in the passenger seat take care of those tasks and more.
I'm just not seeing it work out financially.
Similar financial arguments with self driving cars. If you're one of the rare people who want to get somewhere in a car without driving, you can buy a hell of a lot of chauffeur miles or taxi miles for the capital and R+D costs. The only hope seems to be government intervention to make human driving illegal, it'll never succeed in a free or free-ish market.
Financially it often doesn't work to automate away poor people jobs.
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Tuesday August 19 2014, @04:04PM
Have you used OnStar? The system where you push a button to connect to a call center for these types of features?
It is terrible - I hate dealing with people I know on the phone and I dislike the operators there even more. No fault to them, they are polite, but I have more luck using Android's voice search app most of the time.
For example, I needed to go to SJC. I thought I was being specific with San Jose Airport, however I had to specify the state and then spell San Jose for the operator.
Also, having an operator does not provide a HUD like this does. Very often while driving I want to check my speed/RPM without taking my eyes off the road, and this looks like a decent compromise.
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Tuesday August 19 2014, @04:16PM
Looks like this device requires mobile data - a deal breaker for me. I have no need for mobile coverage while driving, so I stick with Virgin Mobile and have good coverage in urban areas and lose it off in the desert.
Currently they only list music services and Google Maps that integrate with the service. If I can integrate VLC and OSMAnd or similar this would be interesting.
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:48PM
My thoughts exactly. If I can't run my personal library of songs off of a flash drive, SD card or internal storage, it's a no-go for me.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meisterister on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:12PM
I may hold a minority viewpoint here, especially among so many technically-minded people, however I can't stand all of the screens and other electronic crap they're putting into cars now. I see these "entertainment console" devices and additional screens being used to display information like remaining fuel (as if a gauge wouldn't be appreciated) as a terrible distraction for already distracted drivers. I don't want MS-Sync in my car. I don't need a console that can link to my phone. I don't care if your car can rip CDs or natively play MP3s. I'm cool with just a tape deck (because they still make cassette to phono adapters) and a radio. That's it.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.