Drive Into The Future

In the digital age, driving is a rather restrictive activity. At least until we get self driving cars, we are forced to pay our full attention to driving the vehicle, keeping both eyes of the road, and ignoring external distractions. While this makes driving safer, it also renders you unable to carry out common tasks like mobile messaging, navigation, social media posting and voice calls. Luckily, a new company might just have a solution.

The Navdy is a new product which promises to greatly improve the driving experience. It takes the form of a futuristic heads up display (HUD) which looks like something more out of a sci fi movie than from the modern day. Utilising similar technology to what is used by aircraft pilots, a powerful project reflects an image onto a pane of glass which sits in front of the driver of the car.

Image: © 2014 Navdy

The images which the Navdy projects are calibrated to a 2m focus distance meaning that a user of the vehicle can easily view them without taking their eyes (or their focus) off the road in front of them. The projector device itself is portable and can be transferred from car to car. It integrates with a smartphone running the Navdy app which has been designed to run on both iOS and Android devices.

In terms of interaction, a user can control the heads up display with voice communications, something which has now become common across the sector. However, in addition to this, it also makes use of gestures for control. User simply waves their hands in certain directions in order to perform tasks like navigating through apps and answering calls.

Image: © 2014 Navdy

While it works though a single in-house app, the Navdy nonetheless has many the features of a smartphone. The device doesn’t just allow for voice calls, but also will read out messages which the user has received while they were driving. These messages can then be responded to through voice recognition software. This same functionality can be used to make posts to social media networks such as Twitter while still driving. In addition, GPS navigation and mapping information is also able to be shown, giving a much more seamless navigation experience.