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."

Comments

Re:Reward vs risk?

[SharpFang]

Depends what fog.

I faced fog that really obscured anything further than on your lane. No road signs, no turns, no edges of the road. You could still drive safely at a snail's speed, but finding the way was a real challenge. An "augmented reality" GPS display that shows where the actual road goes would be immensely helpful.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Aeros]

right their going to put banner ads on your windshield. Why exactly shouldn't GM look towards the future, that's what successful companies do you know. Just because they had some financial problems recently doesn't mean they always will. Maybe if they come up with a new technology that really catches on they will finish paying off their loan from the government and be successful once again. If only they had a new technology they were working on...

Great, more distractions for drivers...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

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...

Re:Great, more distractions for drivers...

[Securityemo]

You could simply put in sanity checks for the number of highlighted entities/on-screen information density. Each type of displayed object having a priority and a weight, based on screen area covered, distance to other objects, and such...

Re:Reward vs risk?

[natehoy]

Actually, this leads to an interesting question - positional accuracy.

This information is going to be projected on a windshield - a surface that is several feet from your head. Different drivers from different positions are going to have different viewpoints. Someone who is 5' 2" and is sitting in a seat cranked all the way forward is going to be looking through the windshield at a significantly different angle from someone like me (6' 3") sitting in a seat cranked all the way back, and even I sit in different positions based on whether someone is behind me, etc.

Heck, move a few inches to one side and the perspective is going to be thrown totally off.

This is irrelevant for the Buick HUD that displays your current speed, since it really doesn't matter exactly where that "floats", but if it's going to highlight the roadside or some other "position critical" information for me, this is going to be a problem.

There ARE good uses for the sensor technology they talk about. But I don't think a windshield HUD is going to be one of them, sadly.

Re:Non-average driving positions?

[grumbel]

As the video shows they are doing active head and eye tracking of the drivers position in space and adjust the image accordingly.

Driver's perspective?

[Ivan Stepaniuk]

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.

One thing worries me...

[SharpFang]

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.

Re:One thing worries me...

[natehoy]

That's what scares me, too. It's like 4WD here in Maine - if you go down the highway after a snowstorm, you'll pretty much see only two types of cars - very small light cars and SUVs. The former because the cars simply can't handle the conditions, and the latter because some 4X4 drivers became severely overconfident in the capabilities of their vehicle and think 4X4 is some form of magic glue that sticks the wheels to the road. The 4x4s are the ones that get really banged up, because their drivers have been running at or above the speed limit.

That and the possibility of some sort of malfunction at an ill-timed moment. A bunch of drivers tootling down the highway in deep fog, all tailgating one another just like they do in clear conditions, and the second car in line has his sensors hit by a rock kicked up by the first car, and it knocks the sensors off kilter or out of order. Second driver is now completely blind in heavy traffic.

If used to enhance defensive driving, this kind of system could be really useful. Especially using senses like IR to detect problems that may not be very visible (pedestrian in dark clothing walking up to crosswalk at night) or providing useful safety information (paint the 3-foot barrier line around the cyclist, and estimate whether you have enough room to safely pass him based on the speed of oncoming traffic in the opposing lane). Combine this with GPS to "mark" the road you want to drive down, and maybe even "paint" the road names on roads you are passing by, and turn-by-turn GPS is suddenly a lot less distracting.

But that's not how it's going to be used, at least not exclusively. For every driver using this as additional information while driving at a speed they can support without the enhancements, you'll have at least one that turn the system on, put the "Top Gun" soundtrack in, crank it to 11, and drive down the highway in 20-foot-visibility fog at 70MPH following the painted lines.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Vanderhoth]

I don't want my attention drawn to a speed signs.

How am I suppose to tell the cop I didn't know I was in a 50 km/h zone with my stupid windshield pointing out all the frigging signs to me.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[bluefoxlucid]

You can't fuck up drive-by-wire because drive-by-wire itself is a fuck up. Tie a bike cable to your accelerator and hook the other end to your throttle at tension. This is the perfect throttle control system, just like 2-system hydraulics with a side-channel booster (i.e. if it fails, it no longer supplies assistance; but the hydraulics still work) is the perfect braking system (especially since if the whole engine AND electrical system AND half the braking hydraulics catastrophically fail, you can still stop).

There's all this "efficiency" crap, about how we need drive-by-wire to tune that last little 0.1% of fuel economy out and get better MPG. Also we need low rolling resistance tires (and less handling and grip with the road-- sticky tires might cost you a MPG over low-grip low-rolling-resistance fuel economy tires). EFI and electronic ignition isn't enough; we need full tank-to-air-to-cylinder fuel mix and combustion management.

Meanwhile the US gets the lowest fuel economy ever out of the world; everyone else has gasoline cars averaging over 30mpg for real, while we have EPA rated 36mpg cars (the Pontiac G6, which is a Chevy Cobalt which was rated for 32mpg...) but they really get 24mpg highway and 21-22mpg city. I recall Japan averaging over 40mpg on non-hybrid petrol cars; while Europe is averaging 50-60mpg (someone I knew got 80mpg on a rental during a trip though, wtf?) in diesel cars.

We're doing something wrong, and putting a computer between the accelerator and the throttle isn't it. I don't like software bugs being able to floor it for me. And Toyota and Mercedes-Benz can go to hell with their up-and-coming Brake-by-Wire systems.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Dunbal]

You have yet to experience driving through fog so thick you cannot see past the front hood of your car or rain pouring so quickly the wipers do nothing.

Hint: This is when you pull over and wait for the weather to clear before killing yourself/someone else.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[jimbolauski]

Most people with common sense know if you can't see you shouldn't drive, I know that some cases are unavoidable long bridges in Florida where you're not supposed to stop are the most obvious case. The problem with this system is that it will give morons a sense of security, similar to dumb-asses in SUVs going way too fast in the snow, who think they are invincible because they have 4 wheel drive until they try to stop their 1 ton SUV and slam into something, every winter I see more SUV's off the road then anything else. This has the potential to be a great innovation hopefully GM will try to moron proof it by disabling the feature when visibility is low and the car is traveling too fast.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Runaway1956]

"Red is pretty much always used to indicate danger of something critical it's a bad color to use for that sort of information amber might make more sense if you have to highlight this sort of information. I would save red for things in your path or moving into your path - real dangers."

Please, think of those of us with impaired color vision, alright? Use red for frivolous bullshit. Save blue for something that really needs attention.

Don't expect green to get our attention, either. I can drive down a big city street at night, and every single light in sight is pure white. Suddenly, one of those white lights changes to yellow, and I slow down, because I know there's a traffic light there, going to turn red. Yes, you guessed, YELLOW is another good color to get our attention. Don't use red, don't use green.

Amber is alright - I see that. I guess some rare people with worse color vision than I have don't even see that.

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Rasperin]

I hate SUV's but the argument that you see "more suv's then anything else in some certain scenario then another" is probably more along the law of statistics. There are (or were a few years ago) more SUV's on the road then cars/trucks/vans/etc. So law of statistics is going to say that if an equal amount of dumbasses are driving and there are more SUV's on the road, then there will be more SUV's wrecked.

I will admit that security probably also has to do with it, but I feel pretty damn safe in my ((insert 5star crash rating car here))

Re:Reward vs risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think that the engineers would be so stupid as to not allow that kind of adjustment? How in the fuck is this modded up? Hell, the Corvette has an HUD for speeds and such and it's adjustable.