Information Highways (14 of 20)

What we found very early on in the research, is that it's simply not possible to take a camera and connect it directly to a television screen that's mounted inside the dashboard.
It doesn't represent the visual cues that you need for driving.
So with this system, we project the image, 30 meters ahead of the car via this special viewing screen.
In the rain, it certainly does produce much better images than you get with the unaided eye.
Jaguar's system works by using the light of the near infrared end of the spectrum.
This light is invisible to the human eye, but not to the system's near infrared camera.
The images from the camera are projected forward in the driver's line of sight.

So they appear to be in exactly the same place as the obstacles that would be otherwise hidden in the night.
There are some important technologies in here, in this night vision system.
The heads up display could be used for many other applications in the car.
We could give traffic information, all of those kind of things in potentially a safer and more convenient way to the driver.
The technologies of the future could use these vision sensing systems to detect obstacles that perhaps the driver wasn't aware of.
We could provide obstacle detection warning.
Who knows, we may be, we may be able to even offer obstacle avoidance.