Today’s pre-CES 2018 press conference by NVIDIA was fairly lacking in any virtual reality (VR) focused news. A big portion of the briefing went towards autonomous cars and the ways the company has been looking at making that a reality. NIVIDA hasn’t just been working on taking your hand off the steering wheel, it’s also been experimenting with improving the driving experience through augmented reality (AR).
Called NVIDIA Drive AR, the software is designed to give drivers much more information about what’s around them, as well as car info. Car manufacturers have been experimenting with AR heads-up-displays (HUDs) for while now, showing basic information like speed and fuel consumption.
NVIDIA’s solution takes that one step further by using almost videogame like imagery to show drivers things like a route they’ve via the sat nav, or possible dangers they may not have been aware of. The software also blends in with NVIDIA’s self-driving car solutions, meaning that Drive AR can highlight points of interest whilst your not driving.
All these features can then be shown either via the windscreen or dashboard screen located where the speedometer currently is.
“We know that augmented reality is going to define the future of the user interface,” said NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang. “What we want to do, what we’d like to do is revolutionise how people drive, how people more from place to place, how goods are moved. But also revolutionise the way that we interact with our car.”
While this may all seem quite futuristic NVIDIA isn’t looking decades into the future, in fact it expects AR to become commonplace in the next five years. This is all part of NVIDIA’s wider strategy for putting AI into cars, so that computers will one day completely drive you around, or provide you with safe and accurate info should you want to drive yourself.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of NVIDIA and its plans to augmented driving, reporting back with the latest announcements.