Augmented reality offers a safer driving experience

While waitingHUDHUD for the traffic lights to change, your correspondent notices a pair of red warning squares appear on the windscreen. They follow a couple of pedestrians as they cross the road directly ahead. Another warning, this time farther in the distance, highlights a third person, harder to spot, stepping out from behind a line of waiting cars. On the move again, a road to the right is illuminated in blue to indicate the turn suggested by the satnav. A local landmark also gets a name tag attached as it passes by.This realistic test is of a head-up display () produced by Envisics, a firm based in Milton Keynes, just north of London, and one of the leaders in “augmented-reality” displays for vehicles. These work a bit like the virtual-reality headsets worn by computer gamers, except they do not require the user to don any elaborate accessories. Though s have been available in some cars since the late 1980s, producing two-dimensional images on the windscreen directly in the line-of-sight of the driver, this version has far greater clarity because it is holographic. In other words, it produces three-dimensional images with height, width and depth that appear to be part of the view of the road ahead.