System could help drivers see when visibility vanishes

A recent thick soup of early-morning fog in southeastern Michigan closed one school, delayed several others, and contributed to plenty of accidents as drivers struggled to see the road and what was on it.

But a system being developed by General Motors Co. engineers could, in a few years, use sensors to project the outlines of the road onto the windshield, much as a first-down line is shown on television during the broadcast of a football game.

"It does not add information that's not there in the real world; it just augments it," said Tom Seder, GM's lab group manager for human-machine interface at its research and development facility in Warren, Mich.

Mr. Seder's engineering team is working with several universities to create a full windshield "head-up" system that would use night vision, navigation, and cam-era-based sensor technologies to improve visibility and object detection for drivers. The system under development is still years away - Mr. Seder guessed it might be 2018 before it is widely used - but parts of it could make its way into vehicles sooner.

The so-called Head-Up Displays are not new to automobiles; the systems were introduced more than 20 years ago.

Several automakers have experimented intermittently over the last several decades with systems that project speedometer readings, engine warnings, or collision alerts directly into the driver's gaze. But the systems are costly, which delays broader implementation.

But unlike other such systems, which would use only a small amount of windshield space, Mr. Seder and his fellow engineers would use the entire windshield to project road edge lines, road signs, and other objects that appear in the vehicle's sensors, whether the driver can see them or not. And when the system isn't needed, the driver could shut it off, Mr. Seder said.

"When you drive in fog, you fixate on the road edge. With this kind of system, if you could know the road edge, you wouldn't have to fixate on the road edge and can look where you're supposed to," Mr. Seder said.

Jack Nerad of the automotive Web site Kelly's Blue Book said that earlier displays were sometimes distracting and didn't add much useful function for drivers.

"A lot of people find them distracting and turned them off," he said. "You can become somewhat fixated on that because it's somewhat unnatural where they're at."

However, he said whether GM is successful with its design, which is different from previous efforts, remains to be seen. "I think up until now, I have never missed having one. I don't know if I would pay extra for it," Mr. Nerad said.

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:

lvellequette@theblade.com

or 419-724-6091.