BABENHAUSEN, Germany – In the 1960s, hippies asked “What is reality?” Now the question on everyone’s lips is “What the heck is augmented reality?”
Most folks have a general idea of what it means. We see it in sports broadcasting where arrows and information bubbles identify specific cars on a racetrack, or the first-down line appears in yellow or red to television viewers watching a live NFL game.
In vehicles, augmented reality involves overlaying computer-generated data and graphics on top of objects in the real world to inform the driver through an advanced head-up display: Big navigation arrows seem to hover in the air at an intersection and point the way; a string of shimmering red balls light up the road’s center line, like a first-down line, to warn the driver he is veering too close.
Auto supplier Continental says this concept is a game-changer when incorporated into HUDs, an automotive technology that so far has been slow to capture consumer interest.
“It is the first step into a new form of communication between vehicles and drivers,” says Eelco Spoelder, head of the Continental Instrumentation & Driver HMI business unit. “The AR-HUD initiates a dialog without words between the driver and the car.”
HUD systems are not new. General Motors first introduced them in 1988 on several low-volume Oldsmobile models. A handful of other automakers followed, but there was no stampede. Denso, Delphi and Nippon Seiki, in addition to Continental, currently supply a variety of automakers ranging from Audi to Kia. But the technology has not changed much in the past 25 years and most consumers still view it more as a novelty than a safety enhancement.
Market Outlook Hopeful
However, Continental’s Spoelder is hopeful AR technology, along with improvements in HUD optics and packaging, will jumpstart demand.
Worldwide, 10 OEMs currently offer a HUD as an option on 19 models and he predicts about 1.5 million HUD units will be sold in 2014. He says that figure likely will triple to about 5 million units globally by 2018, although about half this growth will be due to the introduction of new low-cost systems for smaller, less-expensive vehicles called combiner HUDs. These systems display information on a small plastic screen in front of the driver instead of the windshield.
Combiner HUDs do not use AR, but Continental clearly hopes they will serve as a stepping stone to the more sophisticated AR-HUD systems as buyers trade up in the future. Continental’s combiner HUDs go into production next year, and other systems already are in the marketplace on cars such as the new Mini Hardtop and Mazda3.
Continental says the AR concept is an important technological advance for both HUDs and the human-machine interface in general. First, it reduces distraction issues by filtering out the most important information and putting it directly into the driver’s field of view so eyes stay on the road.
Secondly, it is a quicker, more-effective safety system because drivers can take a long time to mentally translate a warning beep or haptic vibration into the required corrective action.
The few fractions of a second this cognitive process takes can make the difference between being in a crash and avoiding one.
“With augmentation, we are connecting what the driver’s eyes see with explanatory information,” says Helmut Matschi, head of Continental’s Interior Div. “Drivers receive all important information before their eyes in an easily comprehensible way. This is a major step against driver distraction and sensory overload, both now and in the future.”
And, unlike some full-windshield displays some automakers are showing off, this is not a pipedream. The development of Continental’s AR-HUD is well along and will go into production in 2017. WardsAuto was among the first group of journalists to test-drive a prototype on public roads in Germany recently that was installed in a Kia K9 luxury car.
What Driving Is Like With Augmented Reality
What immediately distinguishes the new AR-HUD from current systems is a larger and much longer field of vision. With current systems, speed and navigation information is 2-dimensional and appears to hover over the car hood a few feet from the driver’s eyes.
This layout is familiar, but when in a crowded city with lots of cross streets, or trying to pick between two adjacent exit lanes heading off an expressway, we usually find ourselves looking down at the more detailed center-stack display because we can’t quite match the HUD display with the real world in front of us.
With the new system, information such as speed and turn information appears about 25 ft. (7.5 m) away, while augmented-reality features related to navigation, lane-departure warning and automated cruise control appear around 60 ft. (18 m) and extend more than 300 ft. (100 m) into the distance.
This longer view for both layers of information does exactly what it is supposed to do: The navigation becomes part of the road and it causes the driver to focus intently ahead and not look down during critical maneuvers.
For instance, when an important turn is coming up in a crowded city, not only is there a small conventional arrow signaling a turn is approaching, but a big AR pulsing arrow suddenly appears about 60 ft. ahead pointing the way.
As the turn comes closer, the big arrow transforms into a line of small arrowheads that rotate in the direction you need to follow like a school of fish and then swim down the designated street.
The same is true when it’s time to leave the expressway. When the exit nears, the arrow turns into a series of small arrow heads that swim down the road ahead and then turn in unison and flow down the appropriate ramp.
Describing it with words makes it sound distracting, but the experience actually is reassuring.
If you are in an unfamiliar area and nervous about missing your exit, seeing the big friendly arrow is as comforting as a lost sea captain finding the North Star.
The system’s other functions work in a similar way, using different graphic elements to limit visual confusion. AR shows how the adaptive cruise control is working by lighting up the car in front that it has locked onto with a glowing crescent. ACC following distance is adjusted by choosing among different bars that visualize the distance on the road surface with colored bars the width of the car ahead. Lane departure warnings are signaled by strings of red “cat’s eyes” that light lane edges.
And, because the system uses GPS positioning in addition to digital map information and camera and radar data from vehicle sensors, the AR-HUD actually can show the driver information beyond his field of view. If the vehicle is approaching an intersection with a stop sign that is hidden behind a bend in the road, it can be revealed to the driver earlier as a virtual image, says Continental HMI expert Guido Meier-Arendt.
Still three years from production, engineers acknowledge the prototype AR-HUD has some issues to refine. For instance, sometimes the movement of the AR imagery is jerky or it shifts out of place momentarily because of car movements or changes in topography. This will be fixed, engineers promise.
Even so, the AR-HUD delivers a new type of driving experience that establishes an almost telepathic relationship between driver and car that’s faster and more intuitive than anything currently available. And that is a pretty big deal.
Continental’s Matschi calls it an important step in the direction of holistic human-machine interfaces in cars for a more comfortable, more economic and safer driving experience. He very well may turn out to be right.
