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Car windows are by definition something you don't see, right?
But car makers are working now to completely change that.
Ford for example has got an idea where you'll touch the car window and feel haptic feedback.
It will tact tirely represent the scene outside, is for people who have impaired vision.
A camera captures the view, converts it to 256 levels of grey, 255 of which are assigned some level of happy feedback to give the person who's touching it a physical real time impression of the contours of the world out there.
General modules has [UNKNOWN] than prototype in windows that work Kinda like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Or displaying an avatar to kids that relates to the car's speed and movement.
Or it can do an AR overlay of information about what's out there past the window at the moment.
Just as with phone-based AR, the idea is to put augmented reality on surfaces you're already looking at, as opposed to separate devices.
Toyota's done something similar that includes the ability to zoom in on something outside.
Just pinch and zoom and the window becomes both viewfinder and Magna-display.
Mercedes F015 concept car that I showed you recently is way out there of course.
But it actually reinterprets what parts of the car function as windows.
In some modes it uses outside cameras to turn the lower part of the inside door into a view, improving the outside scene onto screens that are part of the upholstery.
And the rear panel of the cabin is also a virtual window to the back.
When not in invisible mode these panels can become traditional interactive displays for interaction or entertainment And of course the HUD, or head up display on the front windscreen of a car, is actually fairly common now.
Though it's still mostly contained in a small area and is more of a display than it is augmented reality at this point.
That seems set to change as top auto part suppliers like Harmon, Continental This [UNKNOWN] are all shopping systems to car makers that will bring true AR to the windshield.
So the navigation, instrumentation, communication, all of that will come up here, inside your view of the road.
So you have one place to look all the time, instead of all this ducking down to other parts of the interior.
That would seem to be an improvement.
However, all that clutter in front of us.
Over our view of the road might need some more.
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If all this sounds hard to accomplish, know that much of the core technology is already being co-developed in other industries like interactive store windows Elevator glass, or even see through appliances, that are already on the market, like a Mercedes Benz option that gives you push button control over whether glass is see-through or not.
