PicoP Scanning Engine Target Specifications

Got this from a friend.

Interesting specs, the date is up there.  

Advertising on Windshield through HUD?

Really awesome article, and I kept it all to be sure I don't lose anything.

This is another very clear example of that the business strategy isn't always obvious, and it's not necessarily a straight line. 

Owning Microvision, is like owning a pipeline company to move information, and information and advertising is the big-money commodity. I like where I am.

Thanks JT.

Toronto Star -- More at the source.

During this year's CES, Panasonic demonstrated technology that lets a driver order and pay for fast food through a head-up display in their vehicle before pulling off the road to collect it.  (ALEX WONG / GETTY IMAGES)  

By ALEX WEBBBloomberg

Sat., Jan. 14, 2017

The next frontier in digital advertising may be your car’s windshield.

The advent of connected cars is creating a new sales battleground, and using a vehicle’s windshield may be the next way to pitch more products and services to consumers. McKinsey & Co. estimates that mobile and data-driven services in vehicles will generate $1.5 trillion (U.S.) by 2030. At least part of that will be spent projecting information to drivers and passengers right before their eyes.

“When you think of a person driving and what your needs are when you’re on a typical trip, it’s food, it’s fuel and it’s rest stops,” said John Butler, a Bloomberg analyst. “Owning the inside of the car is critical, it’s really where the money is made. The real value is locked up in the ad opportunity.”

Here’s how a smart windshield may work: A driver who’s close to running out of gas would see an alert pop up that notes the fuel situation and offers to find a nearby gas station. The car’s virtual assistant offers a choice, again on the windshield, of two options, including directions to a station where the driver is eligible for a free cup of coffee — an ad placed by the gas company that fits with the driver’s buying patterns, also known by their smart car.

Panasonic Corp. demonstrated technology at CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas last week, that lets a driver order and pay for fast food through a head-up display before pulling off the road to collect it. Pairing such offerings with other connected subscription services could generate hundreds of dollars in additional recurring revenue per car each year, according to Tom Gebhardt, the head of Panasonic’s automotive business in North America.

“When you start doing payments out of the vehicle, you have to secure those payments somehow, so we’re matching the facial recognition with your credit card,” he said. “We’re really investing in an integrated solution, merging the infotainment system, the instrument cluster and the heads-up display.”

Corning Inc. is starting to sell carmakers the glass used in Apple Inc.’s iPhones for windshields and in-car entertainment systems. The company said the durability and thinness of the glass means that any image projected onto it is sharper than onto a typical windshield. While the product is less than 25 centimetres wide, Corning is working to expand it to a full windshield-size display.

“They could be here in less than two years,” Corning chief technology officer Jeff Evenson said in an interview Thursday. “We’re making the car much more active to set things up for these kinds of services.”

Turning a car windshield into a billboard is part of broader efforts by automakers and tech companies to transform vehicles into connected devices. Multiple companies at CES this week have announced deals and partnerships that use software, digital voice technology and cloud computing to handle everything from automatically scheduling a maintenance appointment to ordering a takeout pizza while on the road.

Automakers such as BMW AG, Hyundai Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. already offer basic head-up displays near the windshield in some models that show information such as the vehicle’s speed. Google parent Alphabet Inc., through its Waze navigation app, suggests nearby restaurants and points of interest during your drive, as does TripAdvisor Inc. The next step is merging these two ideas: projecting points of interest onto your windshield.

Eventually mapping and navigational data could be superimposed onto the road in front of the driver, much in the way that Google Street View currently displays information about an area on a static image. BMW, Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG acquired Nokia Oyj’s HERE mapping unit in 2015 to ensure they were no longer dependent on Google for maps. Intel Corp. announced Tuesday it had acquired a 15-per-cent stake in HERE.

“This is exactly the sort of thing the high-end carmakers are promoting as part of their highly integrated, immersive ‘cockpit’ concepts,” said Richard York, an executive at chip designer ARM Holdings who is responsible for automotive sales.

The question of how the technology is regulated remains open, given concerns about driver distraction. For now, suppliers are eager to promote head-up displays as safety tools. For example, the speed and location of vehicles in a car’s blind spot might be projected onto the windshield.

“We’re going to bring the safety aspect of the vehicles” into the augmented-reality products, said Joseph Yoon, head of LG Electronics’ automotive research and development team.

Boosters also say a windshield display is a safer alternative to drivers taking their eyes off the road to glance down and tap a dashboard infotainment system or check a smartphone. For many years, BMW, Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover Automotive worked with Munich-based startup Metaio GmbH to investigate possible applications for augmented-reality technology in cars, according to a source familiar with Metaio’s business.

The main hurdle to superimposing an enhanced image for the driver was the “tracking problem” — establishing the direction of a driver’s gaze and adapting the image projected onto the windscreen accordingly, the person said. Metaio was acquired by Apple last year and ended its contracts with the carmakers. Panasonic’s Gebhardt said his company had mastered the technology and is seeking a customer willing to deploy it in a car.

People usually understand information presented in an augmented-reality format more quickly than on paper or a smartphone, according to Sunny Webb, who leads Accenture’s research and development efforts in augmented and virtual reality. That makes AR an appealing medium through which to present location-based ads, as well as safety and contextual information to drivers.

“Being able to overlay content in a windshield is a really interesting application,” she said. “There’s a lot of energy going into how to distribute content to passengers and drivers.”

Meanwhile, Harman International Industries Inc., the in-car infotainment systems giant in the process of being acquired by Samsung Electronics Co., is moving into head-up displays. In December, it announced an investment in Navdy Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of a projection display that sits on the dashboard in front of the windshield and provides navigation guidance, car behaviour data and smartphone alerts. The two companies will start selling a jointly branded head-up display this year.

Automotive supplier Magna International Inc. also is likely to unveil an augmented-reality product with a major German carmaker this year, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Automakers also are considering the ability to push content such as video in front of passengers in addition to mapping or road services as a way to generate more revenue from each vehicle.

“We want to have our direct customer relationship delivering premium services to them and being their direct contact,” Klaus Froehlich, BMW’s head of research and development, told reporters at CES. “That’s the clear goal for a premium car manufacturer.”

Audi Laser Headlights -- not in the US

This is a very cool idea, it's been rumored in various places for a while that this was possible. Included just because it's something interesting done with lasers, computers and cars.

I would hope that it's a highly reliable system. There are a lot of possible unpleasant failure scenarios including highlighting the eyes of a pedestrian with high-powered laser light.

Wired.com -- More at the source


Too bad the “Matrix Laser” system, which debuted as part of Audi’s Q8 concept SUV and does everything from highlighting pedestrians to auto-dimming for the sake on oncoming cars, isn’t welcome in the US.

This tech is Audi’s latest push the reinvent the way drivers see the world around them, and its future-heavy name is actually accurate. “Each headlight uses a single laser as the light source, but the beam is broken into a million distinct pixels by the diodes,” says Volker Kaese, Audi’s director of innovation. A small mirror continuously aims the beam to different sections of the matrix to adjust its projection—wide or narrow, high or low, and anywhere in between.

**** 

The fancier moves include projecting words, graphics. Things like, “STOP,” for pedestrians crossing in front of them if cars are coming in the opposite direction that they may not see, or “Again, we’re really sorry about the whole dirty diesel thing.” (Okay, we made that one up.) Or, more practically, it can project lines indicating the width of the car, so you’re sure you’ve got room to squeeze between that 18-wheeler and the highway barrier. The lights can also spotlight specific bits of the road ahead to make sure the driver sees them, like signs, pedestrians, and animals.

The laser lights are more efficient than LEDs, and the projection system is more effective than a head-up display, Kaese argues. “It’s better for your eyes, because you don’t have to refocus or redirect your vision as you’re driving.”

STM at CES -- Updated

Got something forwarded to me that looks awesome, and we have a huge player in our corner.

ST Microelectronics published a guide to their display at CES. 

Microvision is mentioned in it twice: 

• "Internet of things" display, in the section "experience smart things." Where they showed the "Microvision interactive Pico Projector" Which mentioned portable use and "in home IoT devices."
• "Smarter Driving" area, where they showed the "Microvision Virtual Image Heads up display." (which also mentioned "wearable" devices")

This was of course mixed with various other STM Products. That they mention multiple uses in difference spaces in both cases, is great news for us. Yes it will be mobile and portable, but certainly not restricted to cell phones. Bigger displays everywhere. 

Microvision Presentation on HUD and ADAS @ MSIG's 12th Annual Executive Congress

From Microvision's Displayground blog

MSIG’s 12th annual MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

MEMS and Sensors in Automotive Applications on the Road to Autonomous Vehicles: HUD and ADAS from MicroVision

Single Mems mirror for safety

The word is getting out to engineers. This is good. It's not out to the general public yet, but this is more writing on the wall, more good publicity.

EDN Network (More at the source.)

At the MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress, Honkanen presented MicroVision’s automotive applications of their technology using HUD overlays to project critical information on the car windshield as part of the driving scene ahead so that the driver can observe the information without taking their eyes off the road 

Honkanen also presented how MicroVision’s Laser Beam Scanning technology equipped with near infrared (IR) lasers and IR photodetector can be utilized to develop MEMS based scanning LIDAR systems.

The advantage of MEMS based scanning LIDAR is high horizontal and vertical resolution and the ability to dynamically change the detection resolution and frame rate. The same scanning LIDAR can do both slower high resolution and faster lower resolution captures depending on the application or driving situation.

A Single, tiny, innovative Mems Scanning Mirror

The STMicroelectronics relationship with Microvision is getting some attention. 

Thanks Dave!

EDN Network -- Much more at the source

A single, tiny, innovative MEMS scanning mirror technology: Moving to improve automotive safety with HUD and ADAS

Industry moves to acquire LIDAR technology for ADAS


This is a hot topic in the industry and big players are positioning themselves to get a big piece of the pie.

Infineon has acquired LIDAR expertise in October with the recent Innoluce takeover.

Analog Devices has also just announced, on November 17, the acquisition of LBS Technology from Vescent Photonics for the purpose of enabling mainstream adoption of automotive LIDAR systems.

I expect more companies to make similar announcements soon as this market heats up.

The unique MicroVision MEMS scanning mirror construction and operation

VW Augmented Reality

Road&Track

Speaking to Autocar, Volkswagen design boss Klaus Bischoff confirmed that the company was hard at work making the I.D.'s "augmented HUD" a reality when the car reaches production in 2020. Normally, we don't get too excited about HUDs, because in their current state, they're little more than gimmicks. But the I.D.'s promises some game-changing features.

"Augmented" here refers to augmented reality, where projections are used to display information as if it's 50 feet ahead of the driver. With this technology, the I.D. will be able to project street directions in a way that looks like they're on the actual roads, as shown above.

Translated from Japanese -- Thanks Joe.

This came across the desk last night. Translated from the Japanese.

Thanks Joe! 

SOURCE:  -- More at the source (Japanese)



Product information 1

PicoP® laser beam scanning technology allows a large image in a small engine.3D sensing function in a focus-free also built in.

PicoP® laser scanning technology

MicroVision of PicoP® laser beam scanning technology offers a variety of solutions to display and 3D sensing.

Laser beam scanning (LBS) system of its own development is creating a large, bright high-resolution image from a small display of the mobile terminal, to renew the car dashboard, and also or to significantly improve the working process.

In addition, the light source and the mounted display of significant AR / VR of the recent development, can be applied to the measurement device of image capture / 3D sensing.

PicoP® laser beam scanning technology has built a lot of features in its small engine.

And high-definition focus-free images, vivid colors and high contrast (80,000: 1)
, Low power consumption and ultra-thin 6mm
And cooling fan unnecessary and quiet, short-throw-keystone correction · 3D sensing function (measurement, interactive operation)
And low latency

PicoP® laser beam scanning technology is the size of the future is always to lead the industry to improve engine performance as it is, we will continue to provide advanced solutions to the world to continue the transformation.

Product information 2

Laser Beam Scanning Platform

■ super single distance projection laser projector

It can be projected with a big screen without trapezoidal distortion in projection from close range.

Projected from a projector placed in table to the wall surface from the projector installed in the projection-wall on the table

■ 3D sensor
Equipped with a infrared semiconductor laser is scanned in PicoP® projector, by detecting the reflected light from the illuminated region by the photodiode, the two-dimensional coordinates of the object of the scanning region makes it possible to obtain in real time. Furthermore, it is possible to calculate the distance to an object by measuring the time from the emission to detect the reflected light (Time Of Flight).

■ PicoHUD
And high brightness, high contrast, large viewing angle, completely see-through and low heat generation by the laser light source 

Product information 3

[Reference exhibit] Kantatsu Co., Ltd. Mr.

PCB printer

The world's first device with integrated circuit printers and 3D printer!

· Anyone easily added to that can be created, three-dimensional adding a circuit pattern circuit patterns in the structure is the structure that was created in the creation possible · 3D printer circuit patterns on the solder resist and the mechanical structure of the circuit pattern