Augmented Reality and how it enriches the automotive industry
Time to get inventive!
Car gadgets like navigation systems manually installed in your car are a thing from the past. As Augmented Reality has already affected many areas of our day-to-day lives, it’s naturally also made its way into the automotive industry. But that’s hardly a new development, in fact, AR has been in that industry for years.
Wearables — to wear, or not to wear, that is the question
The most known feature of AR in automotive industries is the holographic display of valuable information (driving speed or such) showing up on your windshield.
There are two kinds of displays suitable for AR features in vehicles:
On the one hand, there are wearables, and on the other hand, displays built into a vehicle. Wearables are electronic glasses that offer additional information about your environment using AR-technology. However, they can be considered disruptive, as they always have to be carried as an external fixture.
Now, it is so much easier to integrate AR-projection screens into the car — you can either utilize to video-based AR-systems, or Head-up Displays (HUD).
Video-based AR systems put an extra layer of information onto the image of the front camera in the dashboard of your vehicle; Head-up Displays are displays located in the driver's natural view, giving them further data about their surroundings, so the driver doesn’t even need to take their eyes off the road ahead.
Unlike navigation systems, these kinds of displays ensure the safety of the driver by keeping their focus on the street.
But the safety AR offers in your vehicles goes beyond just that:
The latest sensor-fusion and eye-tracking technologies help adjust the AR-systems’ location according to the current perspective of the user.
Imagine you look to your bottom left, and the display on your windshield is moving with your eyes — to the bottom left as well.
A well-known example for video-based AR is the navigational application in the Mercedes Benz’ A-Class, which was integrated into the vehicle back in 2018.
Now, just around a month ago, Mercedes Benz put forward the next level of automotive AR: alongside having an AR navigational system, the new S-Class is also to have many Augmented Reality technology contents in the areas of driving assistance. That way, owners get speed elements, virtual distance and lane-keeping assistants, and more cool features shown to them per Head-up-Display.
Engineering & Maintenance
But Augmented Reality is not only used for providing vehicles — this topic is particularly interesting for engineering.
Engineering is the conception, model creation, material selection, design, and ultimately the production of the vehicle. All possible properties of the model, such as form, color, design, etc. can be shown without needing to produce a new model. All of that happens via an AR-Tool provided to the engineers. Here, Mercedes-Benz is right at the forefront yet again: using the technology, the company was able to install an engine, nonexistent in real life, into the engine compartment, double-checking on whether or not the planned vehicle components fit into the chassis.
AR Use-Cases are also found in service and maintenance areas. As vehicles, and in particular, their technology, are extremely complex, the workers require major know-how, needing the knowledge on how and when which step has to be done.
Augmented Reality can help transform consecutive steps into virtual instruction and with that, ensure that the engineers can work with full concentration without forgetting any steps. They don’t have to muddle through various manuals but instead, have all the necessary information for their work order right away.
Volkswagen, for example, developed a virtual, interactional repair manual for their concept-model XL1.
Training & Customer Service
Workers can be schooled faster and with more precision in training and apprenticeships using AR. Because they are now able to see complex chassis and hardly visible components better, learning phases and activities are shortened. Not only can workers in the automotive industry benefit from this technology, but customers also reap those benefits as well. Times of battling your way through instruction manuals to find the solution to an error are over: now comprehensible AR- animations present information about vehicles.
So what’s ahead of us?
These are only some of the many innovative Augmented Reality Use-cases in the automotive industry. Even though the AR automotive market seems to be rather small and exclusive, it opens a multitude of new opportunities for both internal employees and external partners and customers. Something that’ll remain interesting, is figuring out which innovative AR-applications will be created for the automotive industry in the future. One thing is certain: some thrilling projects lie ahead.
In the next blog post, you will find out how AR is used in the educational field — the feature and application possibilities will knock you off your feet completely.
Further details? Well, we’re keeping those safe for now, so stay tuned to our new post!
