IDEA 1: AUGMENTED REALITY ON A WINDSHIELD
The future of automobiles will be self driving cars. Millions of Americans are just trying to get from point A to point B with as little complications as possible. Its inevitable with machine learning and AI, that the natural course is to have a self driving car. That experience has been part of American society since having a personal driver or chauffeur was a profession. Google, BMW, and Tesla are already tackling this and Ford Motors will be at forefront as well. That experience will probably leverage good UI but visuals are not the priority for this experience.
However, there is an experience that has a need for visual UI and that is to use self driving technology in another direction. For me, you can not put a price for the experience for a person to use a car as a tool to interact with the road. That said, as long as there is a Mustang, there will always be a need to satisfy a personal relationship between a person and their car. To a samurai, a sword was the extension of himself. To an explorer, it was their ship, to the American, the car will always be an extension of himself and roads they may travel. Instead of taking away the experience of driving from the man, I propose we give them back the power of driving but augmented.
I came up with this idea when driving my 1970 1/2 Falcon/Torino on the 101 this winter when it was raining. I have to redo the weather strips because fogging became an issue. I could not see from the heavy down pour, the night time, and the fogging. I want to combine augmented reality with the experience of being in command of a car (with some intelligent self driving features) to give you augmented smart driving. I do want the car to prevent the driver from crossing lanes and hitting another vehicle or crossing the rumble strips when sleepy, but the driver should feel like he has autonomy over their vehicle.
UNACCEPTABLE DESIGN
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Self driving cars are ugly. I would never want to climb into a vehicle like this. Just looking at it, I assume the AI will drive like my grandmother and on top of it, I should not sacrifice aesthetics to achieve a self driving car. This car looks like a mess despite that there was some thought as to the housing on the sensors and cameras. The attachments don't look one with the vehicle and thus appears after market despite flowing with the hood. It is disruptive to the lines in the body. In my opinion, the sensors should be integrated into the body of the car. Tell me who did it better?
THE VISION
TECHNOLOGYSince 2013 I have been working on Leap Motion and Oculus Rift to create a gesture based Operating system in Unity. Sadly, this project never came to fruition as Leap Motion backed out. However the Hololens is a game changer. Its proof we can overlay a virtual 3D space into our own reality and space and package it into a product. I just want to package this with a windshield.
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EXPERIENCEI think the goal isn't to replace driving with self driving cars, but to embrace the image of driving. The Mustang will always be a classic because of what it means to the driver. There are junkyards and pick and pull piled to the sky with Civics and Camerys, but why does a person keep a Foxbody, or a 68 Mustang, or a Chevelle? Probably because of what it means to them. Restoring a classic with their father and driving down the open road as an adult.
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VISIONThis is what I want to deliver: Augmented driving where the user can still feel like they are in command of their car and yet safely see all the hazards, the boundaries of the road, the lane, other vehicles, ect. Even using self driving technology to intervene from hazards and accidents that the driver may not be aware of.
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IMPLEMENTATIONIt is inexpensive to make windshields have a coating that prevents double images. The cost of the projection is real issue and most projectors using laser projection bright enough can produce 12000 lumens with an LED under 1k per unit and it can be made small enough to do a short throw projection from the dash or the mirror over the whole windshield.
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DASHBOARD PROJECTIONIts not enough to project on a special lens. I have already began testing out projectors from Alibaba that have short throw capabilities that can scan a surface and project in a way that is not stretched and skewed to the driver.
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DRAWBACKS
There are already companies trying to increase the field of vision, enhance the clarity, and track the eye better. Notice how the Hololens has 3 different planes of glass. This type of projection is also patented by Microsoft. I have seen some other patents that project onto a single plane but probably works similarly. Another thing, is that we need to think about how the eye is tracked in order to highlight the road barriers, the lanes and the divider lines. We can not have parallax issues. The driver's eye must be in perfect alignment with his perspective of the road.
I call this a drawback but I have seen LG and Apple both make eye tracking technology in their monitors and TV for 3d stereoscopic vision without glasses. The biggest setback is that they have a limited number of projections they can do. The version I saw at the Game Developers Conference a few years ago only allowed 1 person to see in 3d. Introducing another pair of eyes to the camera messed up the projection. The good thing about a car is that there is only 1 driver ever so that won't be a problem.
I call this a drawback but I have seen LG and Apple both make eye tracking technology in their monitors and TV for 3d stereoscopic vision without glasses. The biggest setback is that they have a limited number of projections they can do. The version I saw at the Game Developers Conference a few years ago only allowed 1 person to see in 3d. Introducing another pair of eyes to the camera messed up the projection. The good thing about a car is that there is only 1 driver ever so that won't be a problem.
EXECUTIONEngineers can develop the technology but you really need an artist to make this technology look seamless. You can not have a clutter or distractions on the road. This technology needs to be minimalist and elegant.
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BMW'S LATEST ATTEMPTThis shows promise but far from my expectations from an intelligent UI in a vehicle. The cluster is too tight and clutters the road ahead. It doesn't' follow the contours of the road. There seems to be parallax issues with the actual lane.
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VISUAL EXPERIENCEInstead, we should look to make the visual to not be intrusive and only slightly augment the reality. However on a dark rainy low visibility night, we should be able to drive. In fact we should be able to drive if someone threw a black cloth on our windshield
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80s FOX BODY ERA
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MODERN AFTER MARKET
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OBLIVION (FILM)
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TOPOLOGY SCANNING |
VISUAL AUGMENTATION |
Oblivion (2013)
Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014)
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Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)
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PRODUCT
Your 2023 vehicles should have this and will have this technology. These are images I have taken from films such as Oblivion and Captain America: Winter Soldier however it is clean and simple. They are a bit too scifi looking but visually we should be going this direction. The fonts will be smooth and on a LCD screen or touch screen and not have the digital display of an 80s alarm clock. I would also like to incorporate gesture control for the augmented reality windshield as well.
IDEA 2: AUTONOMOUS HIVE DRIVING
For now autonomous vehicles will have sensors to see every road hazard and use machine learning to understand its environment. I think at some point there will be enough next generation cars that will be connected to a hive like network that will allow cars to merge faster, orchestrate traffic more efficiently, and navigate vehicles like it is part of an ecosystem.
IDEA 3: ANDROID ECU EMULATOR
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I have burned two ECUs for Fox body 5.0 engines. Its frustrating to have the success of your engine depend on a breadboard with diodes and capacitors from the 80s that were prone to be burned out under any electrical problem. The simple calculations of mass air flow is being controlled by this computer and has less processing power as then a 1987 Nintendo .The pins only have electrical signals being read and sent out through the harness. Why risk the heart of your engine's operation on something so flimsy when we can virtualize the computing of the ECU on iOS or Android. by putting a bluetooth controlled signal relay that plugs directly to the power and ECU harness? On an android phone I can keep many Foxbody profiles on my phone ranging from the factory A9P, A9L, or even have my economy and race tunes stored on my phone and by taking my phone out of the car makes my car useless, hunk of steel making it hard to steal. I could even store the ECU into a safe RFID device.
IDEA 3: ON BOARD DIAGNOSTICS CONNECTED TO INTERNET
Eventually all vehicles will have a data connection to mobile carrier. 4G LTE. Your car will be able to send information about your driving and inform the user their car is in critical danger and tell the driver to pull off to the nearest service center. Newer cars already have warn about low tire pressure, over heating transmission and other things. Having the internet collect this data will inform automanufacturers about design problems things unforseen.
REFERENCES
Augmented Reality in the Car Industry by Melanie May
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/augmented-reality-car-industry-melanie-may
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/augmented-reality-car-industry-melanie-may