imaGinyze has released an app that turns your iPhone into a a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) for your car. The app highlights the lane ahead of you and puts a yellow or red box around vehicles in front of you depending on how close they are. You will get a “Vehicle Ahead” warning if you are too close to the car in front and will be warned if you drift out of your lane.
Hands On With imaGinyze’s Augmented Reality Driving App
Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.
Augmented Driving includes the following features:
- Dynamic augmented reality overlays for lanes and vehicles
- Head-up display (HUD) for system and status information
- Lane detection and lane change warning
- Vehicle detection and low distance information
- System auto-calibration for easy setup
- Many configuration options and quick manual
The system is designed to work in good lighting conditions during daytime for visible lane markings on highways and country roads and for detection of regular cars. For operation, a fix mount is required. Please follow the safety notes and consider the setup instructions for optimum performance.
It takes a few steps to get the phone properly mounted and calibrated.
Step 1. Mount your iPhone.
It took me a few minutes to configure my iPhone mount in a way that allowed the app to see the road clearly. The iPhone needs to be level and mounted high on the windshield.
Below is a photo of how I mounted my iPhone to the windshield.
Step 2. Configure Augmented Driving.
Enter the height of the camera above the ground and the width of the vehicle. I took a guess at these measurements and they seemed to work fine.
Step 3. Align you iPhone.
The iPhone does need to be level and positioned so the camera can see the road clearly.
Step 4. Auto-Calibrate Your System.
I had to be driving about 30 miles per hour before the app could detect the road and the cars in front of me.
Step 5. Enjoy Augmented Driving.
You can also configure the app to give any combination of visual, audio, or vocal alerts.
And of course, you should not drive by using the video from the app!
The app was really fun to use once my iPhone was mounted and I was on the road. It was amazing to see it highlight the lane I was driving in and detect the cars driving in front of me. I’ll be honest to say I was even a little giddy when the app first highlighted the lane I was in.
Will the average real estate professional use the app every day? Probably not. But one day soon this technology will be available in most of the cars we buy. To be honest, I would feel great about having it in stalled in my teenager’s car, knowing the car was paying attention to the road even if she wasn’t.
When I was making the video, I took my eyes off of the road for a second and my car swerved. The app alerted me that I was driving out of the lane.
It started to rain when I was recording the app in action. It was raining pretty hard and visibility was poor. This is where the app shined! The app had no problem “seeing” the lane even though I couldn’t. The smartcar of the future will be able to keep its eyes on the road even when you don’t.
Don’t worry Droid users, there is an augmented driving app for you too. It’s called Wikitude Drive and it combines Google street view with a navigation program and looks pretty amazing.
Wikitude Drive is the worlds first fully functional mobile AR navigation system with global coverage (for Android 1.6 and above). It is a light weight turn-by-turn navigation system that uses Augmented Reality.
Bottom Line: The concept behind the Augmented Diving app is really cool. It is really fun to use but probably not that useful….yet. Hopefully it won’t be long before Tom Tom or MapQuest will implement this technology into their driving apps.
Would you use an Augmented Driving app?
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