from the let-me-know-when-regular-people-can-afford-it dept.
A 'head-up' display for passenger vehicles developed at Cambridge, the first to incorporate holographic techniques, has been incorporated into Jaguar Land Rover vehicles.
Cambridge researchers have developed a new type of head-up display for vehicles which is the first to use laser holographic techniques to project information such as speed, direction and navigation onto the windscreen so the driver doesn't have to take their eyes off the road. The technology – which was conceptualised in the University's Department of Engineering more than a decade ago – is now available on all Jaguar Land Rover vehicles. According to the researchers behind the technology, it is another step towards cars which provide a fully immersive experience, or could even improve safety by monitoring driver behaviour.
Cars can now park for us, help us from skidding out of control, or even prevent us from colliding with other cars. Head-up displays (HUD) are one of the many features which have been incorporated into cars in recent years. Alongside the development of more sophisticated in-car technology, various companies around the world, most notably Google, are developing autonomous cars.
"We're moving towards a fully immersive driver experience in cars, and we think holographic technology could be a big part of that, by providing important information, or even by encouraging good driver behaviour," said one of the technology's developers, Professor Daping Chu of the University's Department of Engineering, who is also Chairman of the Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE).
...
But according to Chu, the technology's potential has yet to be fully realised, and its real advantage is what it could be used for in future models. "What we really want to see is a fully 3D display which can provide much more information to the driver in a non-intrusive way – this is still a first generation piece of technology," he said.
For a technology that feels somewhat futuristic, HUDs actually have a long history. The earliest HUDs were developed during the Second World War to help pilots hit their targets while manoeuvring. The modern HUD became commonplace in military aircraft in the 1960s, in commercial aircraft in the 1970s, and in 1988, the first production car with a HUD was introduced.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday November 30 2015, @07:26AM
HUDs have been available in some cars (production as well as custom) for quite a few years, and these guys only claim to fame seems to be that they used a laser. And we have only their word that nobody else did it that way.
But HUDs in cars, showing anything beyond your speed, have not really proven safer.
There are some studies that they induce just as much distraction as they prevent.
http://www.gizmag.com/hud-technology-driving-safety/38204/ [gizmag.com]
http://www.harbinlaw.com/blog/automobile-hud-safety-hazard.html [harbinlaw.com]
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/07/heads-up-displays-in-cars-can-hinder-driver-safety/ [arstechnica.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/automobiles/as-head-up-displays-become-common-distraction-becomes-an-issue.html [nytimes.com]
http://now.avg.com/heads-up-displays-a-driving-solution-or-another-distraction/ [avg.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheLink on Monday November 30 2015, @09:17AM
Place some cameras/sensors at bumper height and you might even help the driver avoid collision with stuff that's masked/hidden by large vehicles (buses, trucks). Most large vehicles tend to have higher ground clearance. I emailed this suggestion to some people supposedly involved in the Google car project, not sure if they would implement it (I noticed many of their sensors were at roof height, so I suggested adding some at bumper height for the reasons I mentioned).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @09:35AM
The same technology [nvidia.com] will be applied to driverless cars. HUDs for meatsacks unnecessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @02:06PM
> What would be helpful if the HUD was reliable in highlighting objects that are very likely to be in a potential collision course within the next say 5 seconds.
IIRC GM(?) had an IR detector for night driving that could highlight animals like deer lurking beyond the reach of your headlights. I never had a chance to see it operate in person.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 30 2015, @06:15PM
What would be helpful if the HUD was reliable in highlighting objects that are very likely to be in a potential collision
That was one of the things in the Jaguar HUD, and it was also shown as the second image in one of the links I mentioned above.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/automobiles/as-head-up-displays-become-common-distraction-becomes-an-issue.html [nytimes.com]
Animated gif: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/09/10/automobiles/wheels-jaguar/wheels-jaguar-articleLarge-v3.gif [nyt.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @01:58PM
But HUDs in cars, showing anything beyond your speed, have not really proven safer
Who the hell needs to be updated constantly on their speed???? Who even looks at their speedometer any more? A safe driver drives at the same speed as traffic, not according to what their radar detector says. The last thing anyone really needs is the speed cluttering up an already complex visual field.
So if you remove speed from the HUD, HUD is useless. I don't need studies to know that. HUD is great if you're flying a fighter jet and want to kill someone. That's not was cars are for.
Stop screwing around with gadgets and learn how to drive... safely!
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday November 30 2015, @02:13PM
But HUDs in cars, showing anything beyond your speed, have not really proven safer.
In 1990 I was sitting in my coworker's parent's new Olds (that was a car brand, long out of business) that had a HUD of the speed. This was before the SUV craze back when land yachts and male compensation vehicles looked like giant passenger cars instead of wanna be humvees.
The only real effect, so he said, was he never got a speeding ticket, it being hard to avoid knowing your speed while keeping an eye on the road.
Speeding tickets are of course revenue generators not a safety function. So unsurprisingly there would be no reported safety impact in the figures.
However on a personal level, cops kill unarmed people, so the less interaction you have with those killers, the better. And on a society wide scale if they couldn't make a financial profit off speed traps, they might do something crime reducing with their time (or they might just shoot more unarmed people in the back, hard to say for sure).
I suppose as long as the HUD is cheaper than the cost a speeding ticket or two plus the increase in insurance rates...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday November 30 2015, @06:36PM
male compensation vehicles
You are going to have to dig up a new pejorative.
It turns out women buy more (and larger) SUVs than men, and the percentage of single women owning SUVs is also higher than the percentage of single men owning them. (Stats get wonky for married people, because ownership and usage become hard to determine).
Also women are buying more and more pickup trucks, especially young women not living in cities.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 30 2015, @06:50PM
Maybe third wave feminism. Not sure if I'm aiming for insightful or funny, reads about right either way.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @11:41PM
This was realized some time ago; for some reason, women feel safer driving SUVs - probably that "bigger is better" illusion. (Yes it's an illusion - you'd be safer in a 600 kg F1 car than any 2500 kg SUV).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:37AM
According to Consumer Reports, as of 2009, SUV rollover safety had improved to the extent that on average there were slightly fewer driver fatalities per million vehicles, due to rollovers, in SUVs as opposed to cars. By 2011 the IIHS reported that "drivers of today's SUVs are among the least likely to die in a crash".
59% of driver deaths (2013) involved regular cars, pickup accidents accounted for 21%, and coming in last were SUV drivers, making up 18 percent of all fatalities.
So, NO, your information is dated, and was always due to the rollover potential in SUVs. That's pretty much gone now.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:44PM
My mom recently bought an SUV. Needed something that could carry some lumber and her three dogs. She actually wanted one of those old Subaru hatchbacks, but after a few months of searching it became apparent that nobody sells those anymore, so she ended up with an SUV...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @11:47PM
Speeding tickets are of course revenue generators not a safety function. So unsurprisingly there would be no reported safety impact in the figures.
There is a direct relationship between speed and safety. The main reason cars are "safer" today is not the airbags, ABS etc, but the simple fact that in most urban regions, traffic congestion is so great and extends for such long periods of time, that people just can't drive fast most of the time. In L.A., for example, traffic is only 2/3 as fast as it was 25 years ago. If you compare death rates on weekends to weekdays, you see an increase on vehicle-mile basis; this due to higher speeds on the weekends.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:52AM
UI designers should take a lesson from pro gamers.
Take any competitive game that is moddable and look at what kind of interface mods the top level players are using.
Here's what default UIs look like for shooting games: cool looking reticle in the center of the screen, lots of info on the edge of the screen (map, health, ammo, gun, player count, score, chat, etc.)
Here's what the top level player's UIs look like: Simple but extremely visible reticle in the center of the screen, large health and ammo count near the center of the screen, everything else made smaller at the edges of the screen.
Lesson to take away from this: People who demand maximum performance and usability don't care about eye candy. Take the most important information, make them big and visible and put them as close to the center of vision as possible. Everything else, stick them somewhere else because they aren't that important.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday November 30 2015, @12:06PM
"We're moving towards a fully immersive driver experience in cars,"
And here I thought that driving in the real world was as immersive as it could get.....
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @03:10PM
What we need is a heads-up display at home so we can visit our Jaguar Land Rover while it sits in the shop being repaired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @04:05PM
At times like these I like to imagine myself driving cars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Monday November 30 2015, @04:49PM
It’s good to see Land Rovers catch up to 90s Pontiacs. We’re proud of you.
Most likely Jaguar thinks it’s new because they googled display on a windscreen, instead of windshield.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday November 30 2015, @06:52PM
Its a UK automobile, they had to find a way to make the HUD leak oil.
(Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Monday November 30 2015, @05:03PM
If this
incorporate holographic techniques
often implies something that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_display. [wikipedia.org]
However in the article:
The commercially-available Cambridge HUD projects information which is relevant to the driver onto the windscreen, in full colour and in two dimensions.
Which implies that this HUD is just garbage and absolutely a useless dead-end.
Why? Because fixed focal distance *1.
The best use of this ancient tech I could come up with is to project some color/position overlays that would alert you when something could use your attention.
Examples:
Over speed limit (minor) -- steady yellow gradient in forward view.
Over speed limit (>20MPH) -- flashing yellow gradient in forward view.
Crossing lane w/o indicator - steady blue gradiant to side of encroachment.
Crossing lane with vehicle in blind spot - flashing yellow gradiant to side of encroachment.
[1] It is actually significantly slower to re-focus far-near-far than to just look down at your gauges *2.
[2] The 2D image will be floated at a fixed focal distance (usually 1-2 meters) in front of the windscreen.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 30 2015, @06:40PM
You mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_display [wikipedia.org]
You accidentally included the period in the url...
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Monday November 30 2015, @06:40PM
Holographic Technology Adopted by Jaguar Land Rover
The first question to ask whenever anything uses the word "hologram" or its derivatives is: does it actually have anything to do with actual holograms?
Because most of the time, the answer is no.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 30 2015, @06:49PM
Deep diving TFA indicates that they are just using 2D projections on the windshield, and not yet attempting anything holographic or giving the appearance of 3D.
But according to Chu, the technology’s potential has yet to be fully realised, and its real advantage is what it could be used for in future models.
“What we really want to see is a fully 3D display which can provide much more information to the driver in a non-intrusive way – this is still a first generation piece of technology,”
...
The commercially-available Cambridge HUD projects information which is relevant to the driver onto the windscreen, in full colour and in two dimensions.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.