Toyota Developing 3D Head-Up Display

Toyota is the latest automaker to reveal its plans for a next-generation head-up display.

The company is currently developing a 3D head-up display (HUD) for production use with its designers in San Francisco collaborating with engineers in Silicon Valley. Currently, the unique HUD doesn’t require any special viewing glasses to see it in its full 3D glory and provides information such as vehicle speed, navigation assistance and traffic-hazard alerts.

In addition, a demonstration showed the HUD helping locate parking spots along with revealing the time remaining on the meter. The traffic-hazard alerts were also presented ahead of time such as a red ghost image appearing on the HUD if a vehicle could potentially T-bone you.

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According to Kentaro Oguchi, director of Toyota’s InfoTechnology Center in Mountain View, California, the 3D HUD has been in the works for two years now and the actual image projector was developed by the Japanese automaker and no special patches or windshield overlays are required for it to work. A trio of sensors gather the data for the HUD to operate: a phased-array radar to gather speed and the position of objects, cameras to reveal their shape and form, as well as lidar (light detecting and ranging) gear to determine distances to intersections and objects the HUD will display.

To simplify everything, the company is developing a smaller device that will combine all three functions into a more robust sensor as Toyota looks to bring the fancy HUD to market.

[Source: Car and Driver]

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