December 11, 2003
Heads up Helmet for Motorcycles
A company is offering a helmet mounted heads-up-display (HUD) for motorcycles and eventually bicycles. Back when I was looking into this in graduate school (for automobile applications), we were told by Ford Aerospace that if we bought the HUD, they'd give us the car for free.
Motion Research, a Seattle company founded in 1993 by a former racecar driver, Dominic Dobson, said that next spring it would begin selling an inexpensive information display system to be attached to a motorcycle helmet.
The Sportvue head-mounted display will allow riders to see speed, r.p.m. and gear position without taking their eyes off the road. The system gathers speed information from a global positioning satellite receiver attached to the rear of the helmet.
The design, based on a patent co-developed by Tom Furness, one of the pioneers of head-mounted display technology, uses a lens and mirror and backlit liquid crystal display to give the viewer the illusion that the information displayed in the periphery of one eye is projected in the distance.
Very stylish, and I want one.