HUDs, or Heads-Up Displays, aren’t new technology, as they’ve been used for years in aircraft. However, HUDs are slowly finding their way into automobiles as a way to get drivers to pay more attention to the road, rather than the instrument cluster tucked underneath the steering wheel.
While HUDs have been used in limited in-car applications, automakers like General Motors want to use the technology more and more, beyond just showing the car’s current speed.
GM’s new HUDs can integrates a range of data, and shows the potential for incorporating entertainment and communications systems. This next-generation heads-up technology also utilizes sensors and night vision systems to enhance the driver’s ability to see the road when visibility is compromised and when dangers lie ahead.
“We’re looking to create enhanced vision systems,” says Thomas Seder, group lab manager-GM R&D. “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.”
Although HUDs have the potential to dramatically improve vehicle safety as well as in-vehicle communications, they still have yet to break into the mainstream. What may be lacking is some form of standardization. Drivers at this point don’t know what to expect from these systems, so they wouldn’t know just how to interact with them if they were to suddenly become available on a wider basis.
There’s sure to be plenty of fine tweaking before any automaker puts HUDs into wider use, but interacting with our windshields is sure to be on the horizon. As for GM’s prototype HUD technology, it’s unlikely to make it into a production vehicle before 2016.
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