This modified Renault Twizy could lead to the end of cars having dashboards littered with screens showing drivers their speed, car status and other crucial details.
The adapted vehicle has been developed by Panasonic to include an augmented reality heads-up display. Taking six weeks for engineers to alter, the car is able to automatically adapt its screen view to the size and position of the driver.
In particular, it is able to identify objects in front of it using a range of inbuilt cameras. It then highlights them to the driver. A car changing lanes has a line appear under it showing movement and pedestrians can be highlighted, for example.
"Augmented reality technology means that this HUD can then be used to make the driver aware of potential dangers," the company said. The idea behind the car is to stop drivers from looking away from the road and to avoid distractions. One UK-based manufacturer has already ordered a test vehicle to be created, Panasonic told WIRED.
"When you talk about augmented reality at the moment, nobody has tried it in a real car," a spokesperson at CES said. "There is a trend now to replace the mirrors with a central display. We are trying to move the instrument cluster".
Currently the car is being used as an experiment vehicle to show how an augmented reality heads-up display could work in a car. Images on the screen can be up to 12-degrees to the horizontal and 5-degrees to the vertical and are projected up to 10 metres in front of the vehicle.
In total, eight cameras are used within the car, Panasonic says. The cameras compromise of a rear, front, night vision, three side view cameras, and two cameras that track the driver's head and eyes.
The two in-car cameras monitor the driver's position within their vehicle and adjust the on-screen display so it is at the same position as the driver's eyes. "The system brings unprecedented levels of visual information to the driver," the Japanese company said in a statement.
"The cameras can also be combined to produce a variety of different views, including a bird’s-eye-view of the car, projected in the HUD to give the driver a complete 360-degree top-down image. The cameras also negate the need for physical driving mirrors, with images projected in the HUD instead."
The car made its debut at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
