HUD gets a new look
Reality finally catches up with those old Saab ads
The head-up display or HUD where information such as speed or fuel consumption is flashed up on the windshield has been kicking around the car business ever since shortly after former GM Chairman Roger Smith bought Hughes Aircraft in the name of synergy. Despite Smith's best efforts, the HUD never quite caught on with car buyers, largely because it was too expensive for what was basically little more than a fancy speedometer.
Yet the technology has never really disappeared completely and it can be found in some vehicles such as the new BMW 5- and 6-Series. In fact, Siemens recently had to increase the production of the HUD system it furnishes BMW because of increasing demand.
However, now the HUD systems could be on the verge of taking off as in-car feature thanks to advances in technology that makes them both easier to read and design into a dashboard.
DuPont Automotive and Motorola teamed up during the Convergence 2004 automotive electronics show in Detroit to show how the system might work. Michael Sanders, global director of automotive safety, said one of the keys to the new HUD technology is the downsizing of the basic unit. The hardware for old-style HUD displays was about the size of toaster, which meant putting it in a car invariably led to fights between designers and engineers over where it should go inside the dashboard, where space is very valuable.
The system developed by Motorola, however, is about the size of "two sugar cubes," which means its much easier to design into the vehicle, said Gardner, who said DuPont has matched the Motorola system up with its new windscreen interlayer that can serve as the HUD screen.
The whole system uses relatively little electrical power - something that wasn't true with the older HUD systems, Gardner said. Denso, a big Japanese automotive supplier, also is working on a new HUD system that would be capable of flashing more information than just the vehicle’s cruising speed on the windshield. Part of the new interest in HUD displays is a reaction to BMW's iDrive system. BMW has defended the iDrive because it's one way of accessing the wealth of information stored in the vehicle's on board computer. But the iDrive’s human-machine interface has been roundly criticised both in the press and by other design professionals.
Gardner said one of the things the HUD can do is give the driver access to information created by more sophisticated electronic systems. If a car is equipped with a turn-by-turn navigation system, for example, it makes more sense to display the route information on the windshield than to have the driver constantly trying to squint at a screen on the instrument cluster or on the central console, Gardner said. "It's just safer," he said. Gardner said the DuPont/Motorola system is still a work in progress but he thinks it has some serious potential.
I find it distracting whilst driving at night and therefore turn it off but I do use during daylight hours and it is quite useful.
This technology (of toaster miniaturisation) has been around for ages. You've never seen these miniature toasters in the shops because they're waiting for bread technology to catch up.
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sublimatica said:
If you look on www.toasterheads.com you'll see an old news article about how they've managed to miniaturise a normal-sized toaster to something the size of two sugarcubes.
This technology (of toaster miniaturisation) has been around for ages. You've never seen these miniature toasters in the shops because they're waiting for bread technology to catch up.
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superb
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