The auto manufacturer is now developing a new type of product and it isn’t another form of small car.
Recently, at the Auto Shanghai event, Mini revealed that it is going to be rolling out a new product in the form of a pair of augmented reality goggles that are meant to help to improve the experience of drivers.
The devices are going to be called Mini Augmented Vision and are a pair of high tech glasses.
These augmented reality goggles are meant to be worn by drivers so that they will be able to obtain more information about their vehicles and where they are going, available within the field of vision but without getting in the way of the view of the actual road. While behind the wheel of the Mini vehicle, a wearer will be able to view a number of different kinds of information. These include: destination points that a driver can choose before leaving, a navigation display of the first and the last mile of the route, reminders and notifications of factors such as current traveling speed and speed limits.
The augmented reality goggles also help to guide a driver from one point to another along the route.
This wearable technology provides navigation arrows to give directions and suggest lane changes and turns when traveling from one place to another. It can also signal certain points of interest along the way. The goggles can alert the driver with regards to incoming messages from a connected smartphone. Moreover, it can provide a type of X-ray vision of the Mini in order to be able to see where it is in relation to objects and obstacles around it.
These AR glasses can also use the external cameras of the vehicle in order to obtain a clearer image of where the curb and other obstacles are, in order to make it easier to park.
The view through these augmented reality glasses make it much easier to see through the vehicle so that the road ahead will be easier to understand and to navigate. As of yet, Mini has not released any details with regards to its availability or how much they are going to cost.
The dual eye technology makes it possible to recognize certain details that aren’t possible with one.
Google’s Project Glass has been drawing tremendous attention to the augmented reality goggles movement and the concept of the wearable computer, but there are now technologies that are producing results that are well beyond what even the latest glasses have to offer.
AR headsets, when combined with the right operating systems, are enhancing the experience tremendously.
The Brilliantservice R&D department has produced surprising results from what had started as an experiment at the app development house based in Japan. The operating system in question was Viking and its approach to wearable computing was a different one than the “tradition” in this area. In this instance, it used augmented reality through a reliance on gesture controls and the projection of a 720p images into each of the wearer’s eyes at the same time.
These augmented reality goggles were assembled using off the shelf parts simply for the purpose of testing.
The augmented reality goggles, in combination with the Viking OS, allowed apps to be opened, paintings to be drawn, and faces could be matched with names simply by looking in the individual’s direction. Viking, which was written in Objective C, relies on controls based on gestures as its main input format. The cameras set on top of the bridge of the nose recorded the movements of the wearer and provided the user with a graphical avatar of his or her own hand on the heads-up display unit.
This entire augmented reality device was connected to a laptop computer, which was responsible of powering it and providing it with its processing capabilities. That said, later models of the goggles will be designed with their own power source, as opposed to relying on the laptop.
The lenses of the augmented reality headset were reported to function clearly and well whether worn over the naked eye, or seen through prescription eyeglasses. The one statement that was made about the visibility of the image was the requirement to focus on the lenses as the projected images are exceptionally translucent. At the same time, this nature meant that the graphics never overwhelmed the field of vision of the user.
