Giving yourself a Heads Up?
New HUD motorcycle helmet technology is moving on apace
Everything in the world seems to be getting more complicated. Technology is increasing daily and exponentially with new advances designed to ‘make our lives easier and safer’. It would be nice to think that this was all altruistically motivated and the manufacturers and technologists had our best interests at heart – who knows, what do you think – is the trend positive?
Our kids now watch ‘on board’ movies in the back of the car on journeys while we listen to our ipods, chat on our hands free phones and watch our sat navs for guidance.
Honda are developing V2V and V2M driver to pedestrian to motorcycle interface to prevent accidents by making all the parties aware of each other. Volvo are developing a ‘crash proof’ car with on board sensors which mean that it can see any obstacle approaching and will refuse to drive into it. Machines are taking over as regards our safety – and it looks as though they have taken Asimov’s first two laws of robotics very seriously...
1 A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2 A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
...how prophetic was he!
Peripheral Vision
So far motorcyclists have been somewhat peripheral as these advances have marched forward, but now they are being drawn into the technological fold. Firstly their peace was invaded by blue tooth enabled smartphone-chatting in-helmet earbuds but now the loneliness of the long distance motorcyclist is going to be shattered by new voices and sights. As you have probably heard, several manufacturers are working on intelligent glass (Google obviously is one) and helmets which feature a visual display inside the helmet which can give the rider various bits of important information.
One of the new helmets which is being developed at the moment is the Skully P1 helmet. This helmet was born as the result of an accident the Chairman of Skully helmets had when riding his motorcycle. He was trying to make out a road sign which distracted him from noticing the car in front had stopped – you can guess what happened next...
Anyway it subsequently popped into his head (he saw a digital display floating in front of his head in the air in a dream) that a digital display in front of him which would give him directions would actually mean that he didn’t have to look away from the road to make out where he was going and it might actually improve safety not detract from it. Thus the Skully P1 idea was born.
Eyes in the back of your head
So the Skully not only projects accurate directions onto the rider’s visor giving them detailed route guidance so that they have no need to look at a map or road signs but has another interesting feature as well - eyes in the back of their head.
A small camera is attached to the back of the helmet which films a 180 degree view of the road behind the driver and beams it to the semi transparent HUD screen, thus providing the driver with a 360 degree situational view of the road all around them.
The P1 also has an Android point so that phone calls, music and all things phoneable can be added into the drivers helmet.
The GPS, Heads Up Display and synapse operating system are all built into the helmet which just looks like a helmet (!) but operates as a voice operated data hub.
The Heads up display appears to the right hand side of the riders vision and low down so that it doesn’t get in the way of the drivers vision the theory being that the rider will therefore not be distracted.
If you want to become an official tester of the Skully Head Up Dispaly helmet before its launch in 2014 here is a link to register
Skully
Nuviz are also working on a HUDs display system which rather than being integral and built in to the helmet is mounted on the chin bar of the exisiting helmet and it then projects the information onto the lower right hand side of the rider’s visor. This system means that riders would not have to buy a whole new helmet but keep their existing favourite. It remains to be seen which of these innovative creations will either win the race or be the most popular when they are in production.
So obviously the technology is moving forward apace and it seems motorcyclists are not to be left out. What do you think about these advances – will it make motorcyclists safer and help them to anticipate accidents or distract them from the road ahead?
Any thoughts to:
[email protected]
Wemoto
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