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GM Working On Interactive Windshields
this_boat_is_real writes "Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see — and avoid — problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog."
As in the movie, not the BASIC command. Seriously, that's what the mockup (I'm assuming it's a mockup) looks like...Tron-mode.
This has some real potential, I hope it isn't another bit of vaporware....
Living With a Nerd
Given GM's historical failures, and their new immunity from market forces (thank you taxpayers), it's not the place best suited to develop this kind of tech, if indeed this tech is necessary. What's wrong with driving more slowly in the fog? Why do I need HUD, or worse, banner ads, on my windshield? If Toyota, once the paragon of automotive quality, can bork up the drive-by-wire system, it doesn't bode well for GM. I don't want my windshield blue-screening on me.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Can I get these laser beams on a Camaro Shark?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
"Wow, it's like those other cars are coming right towards me!"
Finally, someone who matters (that is, someone with money) starts working on some projection technology. This has quite a bit of potential. Hopefully, they'll stick with it long enough to make something useful of it, instead of abandoning it early on.
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." --Joseph Stalin
Would it be somehow physically possible to have the information visible only from the inside? Doesn't matter much for ordinary data, of course, but if you're going to rig it up to a car computer...
Emotions! In your brain!
It looks like you are trying to crash.
Would you like to
( ) Buy more insurance
( ) Change your beneficiary
It gives new meaning to BSOD.
And the Blue Windshield of Death will actually cause your death.
I live west of my place of employment, and the recent time change has given me it's yearly double-whammy. When you live west of where you work, it means that you're driving east in the morning to get there, and west in the evening to get home. Depending on start and stop times, it means that the sun can be right on the horizon, blinding you at both times. This happens for a few weeks each spring and fall, until the sun rises earlier and sets later, so that the visor can adequately and easily block it. Then time change comes, knocking the sun back down to the horizon.
I want an "active windshield" that knows where my eyeballs are, knows where the sun is, and blackens just the right spot (with a little margin, of course) to shade my eyes. Compared to that, any heads-up displays are secondary.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This seems like interesting tech, and certainly it would provide some level of safety improvement over current cars. However, it seems to me that its just a waste of time. When road travel becomes automated the computer isnt going to need a visual display of the sensor data, and indeed the windshield would be a better place for an lcd display or similar displaying a satellite tv feed. with the pace tech has been developing in the last century, surely its not so far away that cars will be aware of themselves and all those around them in 3d space, ie; the cars in minority report. I can only see development in anything purely for a human driver as wasted development. How much use would we expect to get from this before its superceded?
Awesome now I can enjoy handsfree video chat!!
Its called a HUD (Heads Up Display) - jet fighters have had this sort of thing for a few decades.
Great, so instead of a new windshield costing $100-$200, you'd have to pay $2000 to get one from a dealer.
Yes, I live in Utah where the endless road construction has cracked two of my windshields in the last year so this is a concern for me.
Making "decent", efficiant, cars before working on further power drains.... I would love a car with a better alloy of steel, or even perhaps frames of aluminium bronze, with lightweight plastic coverings.... Immune to rusting out after five years.... And maybe a decent engine. Or go the path of Honda.... Build an electric car as you want it: the best motors, interior, etc, but instead of a ton of batteries, use a fuel cell to hold the energy in the form of quick to refuel hydrogen.... If a battery can ever be made that fits and fuels, cool, but until then you can get the kinks out everywhere else until that advancement has been made....
I say, make fewer, better cars.... Cranking out miles of unsellable crap doesn't help in the long run...
and
Yeah, "could" appear "at some point." This is epic vaporware. Maybe spending millions researching cool gadgets and never bringing them to market is part of the reason GM went bankrupt.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I know it's nighttime, but let me just put my sunglasses on to view my ultraviolet HUD.
Its most importantly the roads and drivers.. Drivers being one of the hardest things to fix but roads being the expensive thing to fix. Some roads are great, but some are destined to claim the lives of hundreds of people over the life span of the road.
What i don't get, is why we don't engineer our roads to be safer? If you build a road between a valley and there are 100 deer accidents a year, don't you think it would have been better to have built a raised road so the deer can go under the road and through the only choke point in the entire valley rather then get themselves killed and a few humans while they're at it?
I don't think fog is a problem.. slow down
I don't think rain is a problem - slow down and make sure your tires are safe to begin with
However both those problems can be addressed with roads once again. - roads that correctly drain water so you don't hydroplane off into someones yard or into opposing traffic. Roads that have grade variations so you know when you're traveling outside your direction of travel - so on and so forth.
Love technology, but firm believer in the simplest technology being the best technology since its less prone to failure and mistakes.
However, since this appears limited perspective of the driver, how annoying will this be for passengers? Passengers will see lines projected onto the windshield that don't match up with the road from their perspective. I wonder if polarization technology can be used to limit the projected lines to the driver's perspective only.
-Turkey
Using a 2D display space (the windshield interior) to provide information about a 3D (real-world outside foggy road) space carries flaws.
The display needs to know the driver's eye position to create an accurate representation of where the edge of the road should be in their vision. Without this, I assume the display would be calibrated for an "average" driving position. This poses problems not only for short, tall or just low-slung drivers slouched in their seats, but also fails to accommodate that in low visibility most people change their driving position and "crane their necks" or stick their heads forwards in order to give the impression of being able to see better through the fog.
Drug runners driving at night are gonna love it.
Unless this is done VERY carefully, I'm afraid it'll just end up distracting most drivers. Yes, head-up displays have existed in fighter jets, etc. for decades, but those pilots are highly trained to process all the data given to them. Throw an average driver into a car that suddenly starts highlighting road signs, etc. and you risk distracting him. What happens if the system freaks out as you drive down a street with tons of road signs? You could end up flooding the windshield with lots of neon lines as the system tries to highlight all of them. And how do you decide exactly what to highlight? Suppose it highlights a person crossing the street in darkness a mile down the road? The driver will get distracted trying to figure out what the car is warning him about.
Now imagine all this being done with a teenager behind the wheel who just got his license...
I'm still waiting for the "Back to the Future" cars to start surfacing. We were promised those cars over 20 years ago. Where are they?
Oh, and "hover boards"... Where are they? I don't see 'em...
When, GM? When will you give me what I want?!?!
No government funds for you!
Holy happy hippy crap!
How do they draw a line that represents the edge of the road without knowing the exact position of the drivers eyes? This is just half of the puzzle.
My other signature is a car
It can improve safety of driving in poor weather conditions immensely comparing to current situation. But I'm afraid it will have a reverse effect in reality: increasing driver's confidence ("the HUD displays the road far ahead, so there is no danger") will result in increasing the speed in these conditions, and result in more serious accidents because the system can't foresee everything - obstacles on the road, slippery surface, other cars that don't have it and drive blindly - the kind of accidents slow and cautious driving would help against, or at least minimize impact.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I still won't buy a car from them.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
you cant drive all the time
Pops Racer stored the plans for the engine of the Mach Five in the windshield:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Racer#Plot
Once again, GM is playing catch-up with Japanese innovation.
Most likely SAAB technology. They were first who intended to use HUD in a car, after all.
Tnx $god SAAB continues its life outside GM. FU GM!
Now I can install a stock market app on my windshield that lets me watch GM stock fall in real time.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Allow people to better see in fog and they will drive faster.
I wonder if we will be able to play Need for Speed on the screen. Just imagine getting kicked out of the bedroom by your wife. Instead of sleeping on the couch and watching TV till you fall asleep, why not go to your car and play some Need for Speed!
not with lasers, but it's great for navigation commands and speed display.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
Here's an idea: learn how to drive. This includes adjusting your speed to the environment around you. Rain? Slow down. Fog? Slow the f**k down.
My car has fog lights for "historical" reasons--before I even knew her, my father-in-law took my wife to a dealership, and she picked every option since she wasn't paying. Now I have that car, and having driven in fog, I'll say it: the fog lights are nothing but a $300 dealer upsell.
When I started designing machinery, I was told to never underestimate the stupidity of the end user. So, I had to learn to idiot-proof my designs. Now so long as enough of them interact with their windshields I could actually start designing for more intelligent people before I retire. Hell, I might even open up a car lot!
but does it run linux...
I want mine to run GTA ... and witness the havoc that ensues...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
R030A Bridgestone performance summer wet-dry tires (don't use in snow; get performance winter tires for that) will hold onto the road like nothing, rain or shine, no hydroplaning. They hold up for a while. They're suitable for racing... in the rain. They also costs $150+ each; $30 tires that float around when it rains are more appealing to consumers, because what do I need fancy tires for?
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Where exactly in that "innovation" is the difference to the systems that BMW and Merc already sell since a few years on the market in their top cars?
i.e. 7 Series of BMW from 2008:
http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2008/allfacts/ergonomics/head_up_display.html
...would be to build in network where these HUD-enabled cars can talk to each other so the car behind can be alerted of conditions or danger by the car ahead. Eventually, once enough of these are on the road, your entire route could be planned out before the trip even takes place based on information it receives from all the other vehicles.
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..Roads are cheap in contrast to lives
But the people who maintain the road do not pay anything when you die ... so roads look expensive to them
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
This is just what we need. More distractions in the car. Though, I hope this can be remotely hackable. It would be cool to make flying penises appear on people's windshields...
Will the gas lock on when it's crashes?
won't reach consumer prices until 2025, which would also be around when I'd expect strong AI.
That's only 15 years away, strong AI is always 20 years down the road, so you should have said 2030. That is all.
Captcha: strain
Wired had this in Found: Artifacts From the Future
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-01/found
Technoli
...is for this kind of windshield display to block out oncoming headlights. All too often, oncoming headlights are so bright that it blocks my ability to see the road in front of me. If it was possible to selectively block out bright lights (when not near railroad crossings of course), it would be so much nicer to drive at night. I know this will never come to market though because it is a technology that is begging to malfunction.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
So, what happens when the spammers figure out how to access your windshield?
We see that now with four wheel drive SUVs, which are inevitably the ones you see that have gone off the road when it snows because the jackasses think their four wheel drive makes them invulnerable. They quickly discover that physics is a harsh mistress.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I bought a GM car in 1998 partly because it had a heads up display. I have to say that it was awesome. For those that are talking about the distraction factor, you shouldn't opine unless you've used one. My display was on a Grand Prix GTP and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss that car.
The HUD on that car was done by reflecting an LCD display into the windshield. It displayed way more than just your speed. It gave you the outside temperature (excellent for the season in New England where the temp would be around freezing and it was raining, snowing, or drizzling out). It also showed you what radio station you were on, whether or not your headlights were on, and your blinkers among other things.
But the coolest part of it was when you drove a lonely, 2 lane road at night through the hills or the mountains. In such cases, I would turn my dashboard lighting off completely. I still knew my speed and other info from the HUD, and thus never had to take my eyes away from the road.
But more importantly, when the dashboard lights were off, and it was dark, the road and it's surroundings slowly began to illuminate for me, the same way that a dark room slowly gets brighter when you come in from bright sunlight. After a few minutes, the otherwise completely dark SIDES of the road would begin to glow and you could see the trees and fields far better than with your dash lights on. This saved my life one night...
I was driving on a back road in NH and a deer came dashing out of the woods, and crossed the road in front of me. I was able to see the movement at the side of the road because my eyes had adjusted to the light. I reacted by slowing down early, and this allowed the deer to cross the road before I got to it. Had I seen it just a little later, I probably would have hit it. Either way, at 60mph on a dark road at night, a HUD is your best friend.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Put a giant spike in the middle of the steering wheel, for safety reasons.
..Roads are cheap in contrast to lives
But the people who maintain the road do not pay anything when you die ... so roads look expensive to them
I think you mean the people who pay to maintain the road. Otherwise you seem to be talking about the actual road maintenance crews who normally just do what they are told and don't get to decide what need to be fixed and what doesn't.
I live in the SanFrancisco area and I must admit the drivers out here are worse than in Boston or NewYork. Not because they are aggressive (which they are not), but because of the distractions. I see drivers with earbuds in, blocking their ability to hear another car and it's horn; having to fiddle with the DVD player for the kids in the back; programming the neverlost/mapping/GPS software on their console; and trying to make a call on their hands free handset.
Shit, most drive automatics anyhow, so their left foot isn't doing anything, so you could probably hook up 1/2 of a Wii-fit board to the dead pedal and let them do that. Display that on half of the windshield.
We've got tons of stop and go traffic during rush hour, and I absolute hate being the last car in the traffic jam, because about once a month the person behind isn't paying attention and comes screeching to a halt no matter how slowly I come to a stop.
I rather see innovations that make people better drivers, rather than a bunch of crutches or distractions. Anybody know how to read a fucking street map anymore rather than putting in Grandma's house into the GPS to get there? With the invention of self parking cars, that's one more skill that will be gone in a few years. I already have friends that cannot parallel park, and they don't have this feature on their car, so we just circle the block for 45min until they can find a spot we don't have to parallel park their fucking huge SUV.
Fighter Pilots have HUDs and take massive amounts of training prior to getting into an actual plane. We allow people to get behind the wheel as long as they have a licensed driver next to them. Can that licensed driver do anything in their Ford Festiva if the newbie gets into a problem? Nope. Now put a HUD in front of the new driver, or any driver for that matter and you're guarantee to distract them.
> GM Working On Interactive Windshields
We already have windshields people interact with whenever they hit a wall.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I can't wait to hack a big goatse across your a windshield. I'd use GM's indicator library to point to the wedding ring on his finger.
Cadillac and I believe a few Buick and Oldsmobile cars have had a simpler version of this for at least a decade now. In certain models of these cars, your direction and speed are projected onto the lower part of the windshield directly in front of the driver. Sure it's simple, but I was actually very fond of being able to see how fast I was going without having to look down at the dashboard. I look forward to seeing what else they can do with this as long as it doesn't become yet another distraction from the road.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
If you build a road between a valley and there are 100 deer accidents a year, don't you think it would have been better to have built a raised road so the deer can go under the road and through the only choke point in the entire valley rather then get themselves killed and a few humans while they're at it?
It's a lot cheaper and easier to just shoot all the deer and build a normal road.
The new GM, same as the old GM.
... a Camry .
So busy coming up with the car of tomorrow, they never have a car to sell today.
Maybe GM needs to stop dreaming up laser-enhanced windshields and build... say
I predict driving will be completely automated by the end of the century. The only HUD you'll need will be will be for your email (or whatever replaces it by then) notifications & RSS feeds if you're watching the scenery go by.
The biggest hurdle is that GM is going is to have to get a eye-augmentation surgery figured out that enables us to see in ultraviolet. Every new car comes with free cyborg surgery! You too can see in ultraviolet! Or, they could just use visible light lasers. You know.
How much are those going to cost to replace when a rock chips them?
I just don't think that technology that will cost that much should be on a device that is called a windSHIELD for a reason.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I don't know how useful / distracting an entire interactive windshield will be, and I can easily see possible issues; but I had a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP with a true HUD that projected speed, turn indicators, etc. up on the glass. When you combined it with the radio control knobs on the steering wheel, I really only had to take my eyes off the road to look at the rear-view or side-view mirrors. It was not distracting at all even though it was directly in front of vision when looking straight out the front from the drivers seat; and it really helped / eased concentration in my opinion. It didn't add squat to the cost of the car and the only downside was that the windshield was expensive if you had to replace - you had to use a special coated one instead of just any replacement. Personally, I cannot figure out why all cars don't come with one. I truly miss mine.
I think Wired magazine covered something like this: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-01/found
At 1:18 in the video, we hear from the GM spokesman that "it can also be used to enhance the drivers experience".
I cringe whenever I hear a company use the words "enhance the [customer/driver/purchaser/...] experience"; typically, the phrase means that "we can put sponsored information right in front of the [customer/driver/purchaser/...]s eyeballs, where he /cant/ ignore it."
In other words, unavoidable, unstoppable, in-car advertisements to "enhance" your drive.
Imagine seeing on your windshield a building circled in green, and the words "Turn here..... for a great Macdonalds Shake" every time you pass a certain type of fast-food restaurant, or having your windshield-display in-car navigation system direct you onto the sponsored toll-road. Or "Burma Shave" type ads superimposed onto the highway verge.
How about "The next ten miles are brought to you by..... Microsoft Windows Galaxy".
Forgive me, but I don't want my automobile to spy on me, or cede control to someone outside my car, and I *CERTAINLY* don't want it to advertise to me, no matter *how* helpful it might be otherwise.
I have to say it: I always wanted night vision like Jackie Chan in that movie—hopefully with some kind of safety so it can't be used (easily) without the headlights on. Heh heh.
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
while driving 100 m.p.h.
The test model was just regular sunglasses with a pair of small paper dots stuck in the relative position of the sun.
The production model will use LCDs to blacken an equivalent region actively determined by a built in low res camera.
The paper dots work. The LCDs should work even better. Hopefully a way to de-uglify them can be found, but then again people seem to love ugly sunglasses.
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
I think a full screen HUD on a car could be very useful.
In particular, a little display which tells me how much time is between me and the car in front of me. Knowing I have 1 second to react versus 4 seconds makes a lot of difference.
Having indicators to tell me there is a car in my blind spot would be nice.
having my GPS turn directions actually laid on in front of me on the road would be very nice.
It seems everybody thinks of these these as being for improving visibility in adverse conditions is a great use. However I think it will prove a lot more useful for giving people information about what is going on around them under good conditions, rather trying to improve things under bad conditions.
You probably don't need an exact solution for this. If you divided the windshield into a 10x10 grid, and assume that the driver's head is in a particular position in the cabin, you might be able to shade just that square, and cast a shadow over everywhere the driver's head would likely be. This would en up shading a lot more than just the disk of the sun, bit it'd be an overall improvement, since you wouldn't have been able to see anything in that area anyway.
Do not look into windshield with remaining eye
If you build a road between a valley and there are 100 deer accidents a year, don't you think it would have been better to have built a raised road so the deer can go under the road and through the only choke point in the entire valley rather then get themselves killed and a few humans while they're at it?
That's very expensive.
It's quite cheap to put up some warning signs, perhaps not have fences/hedges too close to the road, and expect drivers to drive at a sensible speed.
I've had to replace a windshield every year that I've lived in Vermont. This is just what I need to triple or quadruple the cost of replacing one.
is deer-seeking missles - merely for force protection measures, mind you.
1) Dude, let's get drive by wire *braking* right first.
2) When I'm in an accident, the last thing I want to do is interact with my windshield. (And maybe it would be the last thing...)
Take the system that tracks the driver's gaze and add some logic to it to refuse to start the car if their eyes can't see over the steering wheel. Offer it first in Florida.
Have gnu, will travel.
Perhaps GM should take the time to re-focus and concentrate on creating 4-wheeled vehicles that DON'T suck, instead of on technology that is likely to go unapproved by the NHTSA....
1. GM will make this a reality, offer it in some of its less-popular, sportier models
2. The technology will be awesome, it will look and work great. Kinda like HUD in older supercharged Pontiacs and some Vettes.
3. GM will kill the technology, or restrict it to very few models. Possibly, it will take some patents out so that the technology cannot be used by others.
This is what GM does. It's a nonsensical company that cannot find its ass with a map and 3 GPS units.
A HUD that allows you to go faster under weather conditions where you shouldn't be driving at all? It may show you the edge of the road, or what it thinks is the edge -- realtime image recognition is still far from perfect. It may not show you the person or animal that you're about to run over.
If you can't even see the edge of the road with your own eyes, slow down and pull over at the next opportunity. It's the only safe thing to do.