Portable head-up display revealed by Garmin
Who is to say that you cannot have a rather futuristic head-up display in your car, even if it’s not one of the high-end models that come with such features?
Garmin, the satellite navigation producer, has revealed a new head-up display – HUD – technology, which will work in conjunction with already existing Garmin smartphone apps in order to project speed, navigation as well as other vehicle information onto your car windscreen.
This HUD unit will sit on top of your car’s dash and it will sync with app-enabled smartphones via Bluetooth in order to display directions within the vehicle’s line of sight.
Directions will be heard through either the smartphone’s speaker or a Bluetooth-equipped car’s speakers.
The producer claims that their head-up display will offer more details in the driver’s view than any other unit on the market. The stats that the unit will display will include the car’s current speed, the local speed limit, turn arrows, as well as the distance to the next turn and estimated time of arrival.
The unit will also tell the drivers what lane you should be in when on the approach to making a turn.
The aftermarket technology is thought to increase driving safety because it minimizes the time the driver will spend actively looking away from the road. As we mentioned earlier, head-up display units had only been available as a costly built-in option for very new models.
It’s interesting to note that the reveal of the new HUD unit coincides with a study by research firm HIS Automotive, suggesting that head-up displays present ‘unique safety implications’. This is to say that even the technology means that the drivers do not have to look down to view their navigation data, the firm says that it may still result in drivers not focusing properly on their main task, which is driving.
That same study has also predicted that the worldwide sales of the aftermarket head-up displays can increase from 1.2 million last year to 9.1 million by 2020.
