HUD / High Mount Automotive Displays
The automotive HUD market is estimated to be USD 1.1 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 4.3 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 25.28% during the forecast period – REFER https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190329005324/en/4.3-Bn-Automotive-HUD-Market-2025-Technology.
Currently there are many versions of HUD or High Mount Displays intended to display features with limited driver distraction. Luxury car automakers like Lincoln, BMW and others offer versions where the display is projected forward to maintain same driver focal length vision.
Some Standard / Non-Standard Features in HUD:
- 5” (Screen Display) to 18” (Projected) crisp high-definition display.
- Multi-color displays are preferred.
- Multi-function that reflects data as selected by driver.
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment through light sensors with manual option.
- Auto Power ON / OFF for protection of the car battery with manual ON / OFF option.
- Transparent LCD screen, multi-layer Nanometer optical coated acrylic.
- Normal projection 8′ beyond your windshield.
- Some use your Smart Phone as a controller to display features w/wireless connectivity.
- Add: Vision camera that can read and display road signs and speed limits.
- Add: Voice control to limit the display to only those that are important to you as the driver.
For connectivity OBD II is by far the common type of connection for a heads-up display to use. However, where HUD is using the Smart Phone to display more IOT / WEB Based functionalities OB11 connectivity is not important.
GPS HUDs connect with a 3rd-party satellite. Of course, loss of connectivity is area of concern here.
Overwhelming majority of new HUDs use a Projector System. A projector heads up display functions by projecting the image on to a piece of reflective film on your windshield. This arrangement allows you to keep track of the various readings without having to constantly take your eyes off the road and look at your dashboard.
The other is screen style of display comes with several built-in benefits on its own with the most important being clarity. Screen projects directly so does not have to worry about the same light sensitivity issues that some of the other types of displays do. Even better, a screen display does not have to worry about a polarized lens or special windshield materials.
If you are getting a heads-up display explicitly to keep your eyes on the road and you safe, then a projector display is easily the best option. However bright sunlight will generally wash out the projected image for all but the strongest, brightest, or best-made HUDs.
Still projected displays resolution has improved to VGA (640×480) and beyond, good enough that it could be your only instrument panel on a future car.
Below are examples of few 2019 Imbedded HUD Displays as being offered by most of the major Automotive OE’s.
Next Generation HUD:
Continental is working to develop Augmented-Reality HUD designed to supplement exterior view of the traffic conditions in front of the vehicle with virtual information (augmentations) for the driver.
The augmented reality head-up display differs from a normal windshield-HUD since the reflected information appears to be part of the driving situation itself. Refer https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/Interior/Display-Systems/Head-Up-Displays/Holographic-HUD
Sun Innovations is developing a fully transparent information display solution on the entire windshield. This enables drives behind the wheel to stay informed without taking their eyes off the road. Sun’s FW-HUD can be seamlessly integrated in any car, generating images that are always in focus anywhere on the windshield. The content on-display is viewable from any angle and it is scalable in sizes and brightness, with no laser speckles. Refer https://www.sun-innovations.com/index.php/products/fw-hud.
OEMs are likely to include more ADAS applications in the vehicles in the next decade. Those systems that help in monitoring the road conditions and issuing advance warnings to the drivers are being primarily focused. Heads-up display is considered potentially critical ADAS product.
Cameras, sensors (LiDAR-based), Wi-Fi and GPS modules are the essential building blocks of AR-based heads-up display. While the cameras and sensors detect, monitor and guide surroundings as well as driver and pedestrian movements, Wi-Fi and GPS connectivity ensures that the car stays connected with other vehicles and road infrastructure.
Heads-up display (HUD) device turns your smartphone into a convenient display that lets you navigate and drive WHILE you keep your eyes on the road in front of you. However, you do loose usage of your Smart Phone for that period which am sure will not be acceptable to most. Also, during braking or crash the smart could be a flying object.
Current OE Integrated HUD’s:
Ford’s Lincoln HUD is provided by a tiny chip with 400,000 individual mirrors, each of which has a pixel refresh rate of around 5 kHz. It’s also quite customizable, and the design places an emphasis on keeping clutter to a minimum. Information like vehicle speed, the time of day, and the posted speed limit is always present, but more time-sensitive elements – things like traffic directions and incoming call alerts – are given precedence, taking up a greater portion of the display and being illuminated more strongly.
The HUD in the new BMW 7 Series is full color, and it shows speed limits, exit lane images as part of the navigation instructions, and even who’s calling on the phone. The image appears to be hovering over the hood, making it easy for a driver’s eyes to shift focus.
Volvo XC90’s HUD is that it can be adjusted — brightness, positioning — by using a button on the steering wheel. Then these settings can be saved as part of the driver’s seat memory. The not-so-clever thing is that some head-up displays (like this one) become invisible when wearing polarized sunglasses.
Like the Volvo XC90, settings for this HUD can be saved in the driver’s seat memory.
As is the case with most the Jaguar HUD can only be seen by the driver, and it features laser holographic techniques for better color saturation, brightness and contrast compared to rival systems. It’s more robust against issues that affect LED-based systems, such as glare from sunlight and incompatibility with polarized sunglasses.
The 2016 MINI Cooper’s HUD isn’t like the others. It gets its own little screen where all the information is projected. At the top of the dashboard, right in front of the driver, is a slot through which a small plastic rectangle rises and retracts. It has a “smoked” finish, so sufficiently transparent not to hinder forward vision, but dark enough for the readout to be seen easily.
Toyota’s research and development budget runs into the hundreds of millions. Some of this considerable amount is going into a 3D head-up display that turns the windshield into an augmented reality projection screen in the 2016 Prius. Among the many things it can tell a driver is the proximity of parking spaces, and even if there’s still some time left on a meter.
The VW Tuareg has a windscreen head-up display – information is projected onto the windscreen itself with a virtual screen size of 217 x 88 mm. The driver can extensively individualize the information shown on the head-up display.
The Audi Head Up Display projects important information onto the lower section of the windshield above the steering wheel. What information is displayed, the image height, and image brightness can all be adjusted from the MMI® system. Information that can be displayed includes Current speed and speed limit, Turn-by-turn navigation directions, Driver assistance system alerts, Road sign information. The images are high-contrast and hover about 6 ft. in front of the driver.
For After-Market HUD’s as earlier stated there are two versions:
OBD-II HUDs: Car HUDs that connect to a car’s OBD2/OBD-II port read information straight from a vehicle’s onboard computer. This makes information access quicker and more reliable than GPS-based devices. These units also tend to offer more information you can use while driving or maintaining the vehicle.
Smartphone HUDs: Since smart devices can acquire and present a lot of important vehicular information with just the onboard GPS, many car HUDs use a basic smartphone connection to display this information to the drive. This type tends to fall into two subtypes: HUDs with a dedicated display and basic bases with an integrated phone holder. Dedicated displays can present the vehicle information on its own screen, while basic mounts hold the smartphone and reflect its screen with the information presented from a native app. Both options tend to support Android and iOS phones, with some offering built-in Apple or Google Maps support.
There are some HUDS which are designed using Electroluminescent Display Technology like Beneq ELT78S-HUD is designed to demonstrate and to help you to evaluate the unique capabilities of transparent Lumineq® displays. The display comes with a segment/icon design intended for electric car head-up display (HUD) applications. This technology demonstrator enables you to do concepting, prototyping and to adapt the technology to your application with segment display with 78 predefined segments and fully transparent display glass cut to round shape.
