Sony Patent Describes Whimsical Ideas for Adapting VR Displays for Cars
Sony has ideas for adapting virtual-reality head-up display technology for use in cars, said a U.S. patent application (2017/0240047) published Aug. 24 at the Patent and Trademark Office. The application, filed in early 2016, describes an “active window” for vehicle…
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infomatics and VR in which the car’s windshield is partly covered with a flexible, transparent OLED screen so the driver or passengers can see a real-world view of the car’s surroundings overlaid by synthetic images. A camera with GPS would continually capture images of the road ahead, which are compared with location information stored in an in-car server or pulled from the internet. As onboard sensors monitor the outside climate, an infrared transmitter lets the camera capture images in the dark, it said. Using what Sony dubs a “fun selector,” the car’s occupants can decide whether to augment reality with useful information to aid navigation or to add whimsy. “Text may be superimposed on outside images to identify landmarks and interesting items in the view,” said the application. The outside world can be “enhanced to allow amusing things to happen,” such as an image of a dinosaur peering out from between two trees or boulders, or superimposing images of grass, lakes and flowers onto a desert landscape through which the vehicle is passing, it said. The camera can be motor-mounted to widen the view or it can be roof-mounted to capture native 360-degree images, it wrote. Sony didn’t comment on the invention's possible commercial uses.