Slashdot Mirror
New Car Heads-Up Display To Be Controlled By Hand Gestures, Voice Commands
Lucas123 (935744) writes "A new company has just opened a crowdsourcing campaign for a heads-up display that plugs into your car's OBD II port and works with iPhones and Android OS-enabled mobile devices via Bluetooth to project a 5.1-in transparent screen that appears to float six feet in front of the windshield. The HUD, called Navdy, works with navigation apps such as Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions, and music apps such as Spotify, Pandora, iTunes Music and Google Play Music. Using voice commands via Apple's Siri or Google Voice, the HUD can also write, read aloud or display notifications from text messages or social media apps, such as Twitter. Phone calls, texting or other applications can also be controlled with hand gestures enabled by an infrared camera."
That's not a front page on 100 news sites horrific accident waiting to happen.
...speech impediment or weird accents or sore throat, please start by using the hand gesture "shoving a giant middle finger into the dashboard".
Years ago, in "National Lampoon," they had all the country's gestures for FY. Starting from the American middle finger to the Italian right arm scooping up cradled in the left arm.
If a display is not integrated into the car itself, and in particular where the *sole* purpose of a display should be to assist in driving the car safely, then it's going to be considered a distraction from driving, and therefore not going to be legal to use while driving.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
to project a 5.1-in transparent screen that appears to float six feet in front of the windshield.
I only read TFS but... that's a bit small for that distance, isn't it? Maybe they can program it to display turn-by-turn directions one letter at a time.
As a person of Cuban descent and therefore a person whose vocabulary is inclusive of hand gestures, I forsee mayhem.
Is this really the best way to control something in a car? Do we really want drivers taking their hands off the steering wheels to make silly motions in space while they're driving?
I mean, maybe it'll work. Maybe it does make sense. But my initial reaction is skeptical.
Those cool features described in the TFA, like the HUD display for test messages, twitter, iTunes, etc. leads to something politely called 'distracted driving' and less politely called 'Being an Asshole' which last year killed 3,328 people and injured 421,000. As a long-time biker, I often see the drivers working their smartphone whilst swerving through traffic and chatting up their passengers and I've damn near become one of the 421,000 (or the 3,328) more than once. Rather than provide fancy new 'heads up' displays for drivers or built-in smart phone driver docking stations for drivers with their 'heads up' their ass, we should be working on roadside electronic surveillance and longer prison sentences for the drivers who kill people while using their smartphone.
Drive The Fucking Vehicle (analogous to FTFA - Fly The Fucking Aircraft). That means you shouldn't really be doing any talking, gesturing, masturbating and other such activities beyond watching the road.
As an american ive been using hand gestures and voice commands in traffic for years now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Isn't 6 feet a little close for an HUD? If you're focussing your attention at the end of your car's nose I'm not sure that's ideal.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
...especially with law firms specializing in personal injury.
So, instead of people taking their hands of the steering wheel to hold onto their phone, they're going to take them off the steering wheel to control their stuff with gestures???
Seriously people, are you actually designing something for people who are driving cars?
Here's a suggestion, save your damned text messages and social media updates for when you're not bloody well driving.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I have a better idea, why not get a customized plate with your SSN? At least doing so has no potential of killing you in a high-speed crash.
Your OBD II port has direct access to CANBUS, as such plugging anything with wireless connectivity puts a huge "remotely mess with my car" sign on it. Throw in Bluetooth and possibly unpatched Android into the mix and you are inviting every script kiddie out there to turn your car into a video game.
My brother was just rear ended by someone who was talking on the phone. People do not need more distractions while driving. A HUD should be limited to presenting information that helps people drive. Talking on the phone even hands free is still a distraction, visual navigation systems are also an unnecessary distraction. Honestly people put the phone down and pay attention to the road, your life and the lives of others depends on it.
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
But, you see, there was a fly in the car and as I tried to swat it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Forget messaging or GPS. I'm much more interested the targeting reticle, lead indicator, target speed, and lock notice applications.
Yeah, whatever. Alpine will soon be releasing a head unit that supports Apple CarPlay. That's what I'm waiting for. In fact, I haven't been this excited in aftermarket car audio in well over 20 years. =)
Life is not for the lazy.
Siriously folks, we need self driving cars before the human race goes exstinct
HUD is a reasonable tool to augment driving information. It makes sense for maps, directions, vehicle alerts. Does not make sense for "luxury" and distraction-causing activities like texting, videos, anything in that area.
Opening up this can of worm is so directly linkable to liability for accidents, that I would be surprised if this company survives the first lawsuit.
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive -- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."
-- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
It was flipping awesome being able to see direction and speed right there. It even showed radio stations for XM when I changed the channels. I have no clue why every car in the world didn't adopt this feature. My only guess is GM had a patent tight as a snare drum.
So if i flip someone the bird i get a HUD targeting/fire control display?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The trick is, although the focus point is near (nearby the car's nose), the region you're looking at is also the region where the other interesting things (like the car in front) also happen to be visible.
In other words, you're much more likely to notice that car in front of you has slammed brakes when you're looking at a virtual display transparently floating between said car and you, than if you were looking away from the car down to your right at the "infotainment" display.
That's why some cars already use this concept for the display of their crash-avoidance systems.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yes, only idiots take their eyes off the road to change something. We need legislation to outlaw this and any other distraction. No more should we put up with people changing radio stations and adjusting the a/c. In fact, that legislation should include a head harness requirement that mandates always looking forward. God know humans have no ability to manage their own actions, so government needs to rescue us from our own stupidity. (Buy I guess that's pretty stupid to...)
What's the current speed limit - it's easy to miss the speed signs, especially when you're turning onto a road from a sideroad where you might not see them! Can we have some sort of display that tells me I'm going too fast (too slow?) without me having to compare two numbers? A red warning symbol for going too fast?
Yup, it's possible. Basically two ways:
- GPS that have databse of speedlimits (also useful when the GPS computes the fastest route). That's both available at some car manufacturer (as a random example, Volvo's nav does it) and available at 3rd parties (As an exemple, the openstreetmaps database has speed limits, and the opensource navit application does display them, along with color-code (green/red) to tell you if your within/beyond the limits).
That would be rather easy to integrate into TFA's HUD. (as it has on-board and can also connect to smartphones over bluetooth. And maybe could also get the information from the infotainment over the ODB2? No idea about that).
- Optical recognition:
Latest generation camera and image recognition capabilities of crash avoidance systems (like mobilEYE which is one of the major manufacturer and 3rd-party solution provider) are able to detect and decode traffic sign like speed limits. This could also be fed into the HUD's onboard apps, or ask the smart-phone to display it to the hud instead of its own screen).
Thundercall alerts. If there's weather enroute that means I need to get off the road coming in the next few minutes, I'd like to be told that in a way that doesn't involve me looking at my phone, and BEFORE I get onto a highway
The radios have a capabilities called RDS on which are broadcast informations like TMC, and its common place nearly everywhere in europe. This information is used by the GPS (either the in-car, or a 3rd party with an integrated FM receiver). Whenever a problem happens, the TMC information about it is digitally broad cast over RDS and your GPS gives a small alert box, telling that you might need to adapt your route to the newest information and giving you the options to read the information (if you haven't heard them over TA/TP) and giving you the option to have the GPS calculate a safe alternate route around the problem.
Again something useful to have on the HUD, and not that complicated to integrate.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My partner is a vision and attention researcher, so I've absorbed some fascinating information about how vision and attention are related.
You can be looking at something but not actually paying any attention to it. Further, your attention works differently at different depth planes - so while you might be focused on the HUD thinking that you're still aware of what's happening on the road, you almost certainly are not.
This sounds like an interesting device but - based on my partner's research and what she's said about it - it doesn't seem like it deals gracefully with issues of attention. I think there's definitely the potential for regulatory restrictions on devices like these if greater risk is demonstrated.
You can already get certain kinds of data from your dashboard and in-car infotainment systems designed for the driver to use. We presumably have laws that specify what's legit (speed, radio, etc.,) and what's not (watching tv shows). Can't we agree that if a HUD limits itself it what's already available, and is less distracting than the already approved alternative, then it's a win? If it tries to do things that are illegal, then it's bad? That assumes that the existing laws already do a reasonable job of win vs bad, but if they don't - fix the existing law - but a device like this seems no worse, if the gestures aren't more distracting than reaching for knobs/buttons. If this device wants to do more than is legal in existing head units / dials / knobs then we have a legislative process to address that. I had a rental with a HUD, and it seemed to me (FWIW) that it was less distracting to use that to see speed / nav directions on that then to take my eyes further from the road to look down at the speedo or center console video screen. YMMV.
You don't need to take your eyes off of the road or necessarily even take either hand off of the wheel to change radio stations or control the in-car cd player, as many car radios have an extra set of controls right behind the steering wheel, and is very easy to control entirely by tactile sensation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...for the version that display porn.
I won't be happy until I get my LCARS display. Just imagine controlling a car like that.
Heck, "car" is already included in the acronym!
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
I take it you've never seen a visual navigation system that displays turns onto the windshield? If you had, you'd think it was very good for safety!
Yes, only idiots take their eyes off the road to change something. We need legislation to outlaw this and any other distraction. No more should we put up with people changing radio stations and adjusting the a/c. In fact, that legislation should include a head harness requirement that mandates always looking forward. God know humans have no ability to manage their own actions, so government needs to rescue us from our own stupidity. (Buy I guess that's pretty stupid to...)
There was an "invention" in MAD Magazine in the mid-1960s (the author of the "article" was the legendary Dave Berg, IIRC) that was EXACTLY that!
I would allow your head to turn, but only for a short period (the driver in question was shown ogling a busty woman walking down the sidewalk), then it snapped your head back to the "straight ahead" position (and as shown in the magazine, apparently leaving the driver's false-teeth and eyeballs behind, IIRC)...
Lots of waving of hands?
Car not for sale to Italians.
What have you got against HUDs, man? From a post above you claim reading a road sign isn't "taking your eyes off the road" yet barely moving ones eye to read a floating message that appears to be floating right next to said road sign is. You make no sense. You're hating to be hating is all I can think of. You don't like them, so therefore they shouldn't exist and no one is allowed to like or want them. Also, maybe you should do some re-parsing. You are attempting to lock down a colloquial phrase which is general in nature into a very strict definition. If you're going to be that anal about "keeping your eyes on the road" then might I suggest you open your car door and plant your face directly on the asphalt until your eyes are ON THE ROAD and don't let them leave it no matter the pain! Now see how ridiculous that sounds? That's what your arguments sound like.
It's been my experience that bikers are often the biggest assholes on the road and yet are the first to start calling every other person an asshole. I see you've added another positive data point to my anecdotal database.