Introduction to Augmented Reality in Cars
Imagine driving on a dark road, but seeing every part with perfect clarity as your night vision camera seamlessly merges with what you see through the windshield. This futuristic driving experience is closer than you’re thinking that, due to the newest advancements in augmented reality (AR) technology and modern approaches to head-up displays (HUDs).
The Current State of HUDs
Today’s HUDs are limited of their ability to supply a meaningful AR experience. They can only produce small images directly above the steering wheel, which is way too small to deliver any significant AR content. Furthermore, viewing images produced by conventional HUDs requires drivers to focus their gaze inside a brief range, typically at a focal distance of 2-3 meters, making it unattainable to give attention to the road ahead and AR content concurrently.
Overcoming the Limitations of Conventional Optics
Two Nokia Bell Labs researchers, Marja Salmimaa and Toni Järvenpää, are working to beat these limitations by developing large waveguides with nanoscale gratings using the newest high refractive index materials. This technology replaces conventional optics in future AR HUDs, allowing for a greatly increased virtual image size and projection to "infinity" without dramatically increasing the HUD-unit volume.
The Benefits of Diffractive Optics
Using diffractive optics can eliminate other problems with conventional HUDs, comparable to incompatible sunglass polarization, solar heat concentration, and the necessity for special wedged windshields. Nokia’s diffractive optic display inventions are already utilized in commercially available head-mounted AR displays, and the corporate is now on the lookout for latest licensing partners to commercialize winning automotive HUD solutions.
The Future of Automotive Technology
The next decade is predicted to bring many technological disruptions to the automotive industry, including constant vehicle-to-anything (V2X) connectedness, a rise in onboard sensors and cameras, and the combination of onboard computing hardware with cloud computing. New UI paradigms like voice or gaze control will make interacting with AR information easier, and AI will guide the display of data within the HUD based on the situation.
Transforming Cars into Personal Driving Assistants
As these technologies converge, they’ve the potential to remodel cars into personal driving assistants, blurring the road between autonomous and human driving. This form of augmented driving might be very just like automated driving, except the motive force will remain effortlessly in charge. The augmented driver and the automated automotive will create a gestalt driver-automobile team, rather more competent than either one alone.
The Importance of AR HUDs
AR HUDs are destined to grow to be a very powerful display of a automotive or any moving vehicle, showing drivers what matters most in any situation. While AR HUDs won’t completely eliminate the necessity for other displays, only an AR HUD can put prioritized information directly in the motive force’s field of view, enabling the shortest possible response time to what’s happening around them.
Conclusion
Diffractive optics solutions are the reply to enabling full-fledged AR HUD technology. With the correct partner, it’s possible to alter the long run of driving. The automotive industry, investors, and technology firms developing compatible solutions are invited to partner with Nokia to bring this vision to life. Together, we will create a safer, more efficient, and more enjoyable driving experience for everybody.
