Virtual display for cars could reduce accidents

Many accidents, especially at night, are caused by drivers having to take their eye off the road to look down at the instrument panel.
A head-up display (HUD) can improve the situation by projecting a virtual image of the instruments onto the windscreen but they are expensive and bulky.

Part of the problem with the volume is that the windscreen projection system needs an optical chain, the size of which is difficult to reduce. But OEDIBUS (optoelectronic Eye-up floating DISplay BUS) project could provide a solution.

"The OEDIBUS display chain is very small," says says Piermario Repetto of Centro Richerce Fiat. "We use holographic technology to couple the light into and out of the HUD combiner. Light propagates through the material of the combiner and a set of holographic diffraction gratings is used to relay the image from a state-of-the-art microdisplay to the driver’s eye."

And because it produces a virtual image, drivers don’t have to change their focus when they look at the display panel."

The HUD will be exhibited at the forthcoming IST 2004 conference, and plans are in place for putting the system into production.

Via Innovations Report.