Jacques Lincoln,
Global
Product Manager, Vehicle Displays
Q & A about Vehicle Displays—A visit with Jacques Lincoln,
Global
Product Manager, Vehicle Displays
What, briefly, is a vehicle display?
A vehicle display is any display where dynamic information is presented to an operator within a vehicle. Cars and trucks have long had instrument clusters and center console displays. Today, flat panel LCD and LED displays are found in more places and in more vehicles. The term “vehicle display” is used to generically describe these.
What is the market potential for vehicle displays?
The installation of vehicles display is forecasted to grow both in absolute numbers and percentage. For example, according to Telematics Research Group Incorporated, in 2006, approximately one million head-up displays (HUDs) were sold in vehicles, representing a little over one percent of the market. By 2011, they forecast 8.6 million installed HUDs, representing over 10% of vehicles sold worldwide.
What need is Microvision addressing?
Drivers both want and need more information while driving, but space is limited for vehicle displays. Limited space, more information, and increasing driver distraction are growing challenges for drivers and the vehicle displays on which they rely. Typically, vehicle displays are located somewhere on the instrument panel or in the center stack requiring the driver to look away from the road to view them. One solution is Microvision’s HUD display which places information on the windscreen, closer to a driver’s typical line of sight. Here, the information is more readily available without encroaching on the already crowed instrument panel or center stack.
How does Microvision’s technology address this situation?
Microvision’s vehicle display products produce high-quality images that can easily be projected on a variety of surfaces. For example, our HUD product displays important situational information on the windscreen at a virtual distance of about 2.5 meters, just below the driver’s normal line of sight without further crowding the instrument panel or distracting the driver from the road ahead.
What is it specifically that Microvision brings to the Vehicle Display?
Microvision’s PicoPTM display engine provides the foundation for our vehicle displays. It generates a bright, high contrast, high quality image from a very small package. These advantages are well suited for a wide variety of applications, especially in vehicle displays. The PicoP is highly reconfigurable and can easily display images of different colors, shapes and sizes with relative ease. The same basic PicoP display engine can be used to generate an image for an instrument cluster display, rear seat entertainment display, or head-up display image projected on the windscreen.
What is particularly novel or noteworthy about PicoP for Vehicle Displays?
For a vehicle, power, space, weight and ease of installation are key design considerations for new features. Power is a critical design consideration for automotive OEMs who are constantly challenged to add features and minimize the power drawn by a system to optimize vehicle performance. Additionally, there isn’t room within the instrument panel for a large display engine. Automotive engineers are especially concerned with the weight of every feature. Overall weight has a significant impact on performance including fuel economy, handling, and even vehicle emissions. The automotive industry is very competitive, meaning there is a lot of pressure to keep costs down. PicoP based vehicle display engines provide ease of installation based on a novel approach to image distortion correction. By every one of these measures, PicoP based vehicle display products have an advantage over competing technologies.
What is required to get to market with an embedded vehicle display?
The development timeline for new vehicles is typically over four years from initial concept to production. We are actively working with a wide variety of automotive suppliers and OEMs who recognize the advantages of Microvision’s laser based scan engine for vehicle displays.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I believe very strongly that Microvision’s PicoP is among the most compelling display technology developments that will change the way that vehicles are designed and how drivers interact with information. This has the potential to be a watershed technology that has the same impact on vehicle safety that we saw with air bags and ABS brakes.