Augmented Reality in Car

Augmented Reality in Car


Danish researchers have developed a concept study for the Toyota Group, will be at the side windows of vehicles in interactive displays.

Even if they are so far only sluggishly in the average consumer prevails: the so-called Augmented Reality (AR), augmented reality, is predicted to remain a great future. Currently, we mean in practical high-end smartphones and tablet computers that display a camera image of the environment, which will fade due to AR software with interesting information - expanded precisely.

This can be for example a navigation aid, paving the way to the next restaurant on the arrows indicate the real picture, background information into a tourist attraction, before the user is standing or driving assistant for your car, the meter number is graphically up to the vehicle ahead, or traffic signs highlighting visually .

Truly spectacular, this is not yet, some critics even speaks of gimmick. In fact, it appears that the number of long-term users of AR applications on smart phones and tablets hold is still limited. Venture capital-financed companies like the Dutch specialist Layar [1], where at least 60 employees working on such solutions attempt, therefore, with new areas of use to advertise.

A concept study, the researchers at the Institute of Interaction Design in Copenhagen (CIID) in collaboration with the European Design Centre Kansei1 developed by the Japanese automaker Toyota, shows how AR might look in a few years in its full glory, when the technology is fine. Instead of just a small smart phone or a little bigger than Tablet to use with information superimposed on the window to the world, the CIID scientists are working with the entire side window of a vehicle.

The idea: From the simple glasses is an interactive game area, to retrieve the information at your fingertips or the passengers, as children do now underway with slices, "paint" can.

Basically the idea is technically feasible today: Instead of a normal window, put the disc in a touch-sensitive screen. Externally mounted cameras capture the environment, which is then reflected in, so that it works for the passenger, as if he were looking through glass outside. Thanks to proper perspective it should also play do not interfere.

The display window then allows the AR: It allows information to be placed over the camera image, in the case of the CIID-concept example, the distance to objects such as trees or buildings that were previously marked with the finger. But navigation elements could be displayed. Everything is controlled via a small computer that could put in the trunk or center console.

The prototype has other functions. So you can persist objects, pass on the passenger, and to zoom in - an interesting example to look at sites where it has just passed. A feature that apps for smartphones, such as "Word Lens" is already written by the automated translation of AR overlay, which will also incorporate CIID researcher. But not only the side windows should be in the longer term to the interactive window is being considered by the project managers also the panoramic roof of the car involved in the concept. Then we could show, for example during the night a starry sky, astronomical and visually correct.

In a video that consists only of static images filmed and computer graphics, can be clearly understand how the concept could be implemented. This view from the side windows no different than ordinary window - except that they are in truth just screens.

CIID before the concept gained mass production, however, must still display a flat, stable, and are somewhat malleable, to be as windows and panoramic roofs installed in cars. And certified safe and the technique should also be - a question that the team has not yet been employed. More than ten years but it should not take to implement such a project into practice, researchers hope. Now we need to demand her. Impressive as AR applications for smart phones and tablets have traveled the prototypes.