Automotive Engineer

Taking calls while driving, or following instructions from a navigation system, were things very few people used to do – now it’s harder to find people who don’t do such things.

All of this places a lot of extra strain on drivers. The quantity and variety of data they process while driving, especially in cities, is extraordinary. So the task of designing and developing the human-machine interface (HMI) that sits in the middle of this process is becoming ever more complex too.

One of BMW’s solutions is the head-up display. The technology it now has in the 6 Series coupe is state-of-the-art: full colour, and in 3D.

But this is only the beginning. The firm has shown augmented-reality head-up displays in several concept cars. The technology should help to make driving simpler in future, especially when the amount of connectivity between the vehicle and its environment increases.

“We’re dealing in R&D with all the new technologies that are available,” says Dr Dirk Wisselmann, BMW’s head of driver assistance strategy. “We always think about ways to show things in a more stylish but more efficient way – efficient for us means improving driving safety, comfort, and asking whether it is helpful for the driver. At the moment the technology is still quite far from production. But if it matures we’ll look to bring it to series vehicles.”

The evaluation process is a long and very detailed one since the system and its function are inherently linked to safety. There are lots of design rules.

Then there are consumers’ expectations. It’s an increasingly connected world, and it’s becoming an expectation that the vehicle will be linked in too. Everything from touch screens to freely-programmable displays can be simulated, or tested with prototype systems in the lab.

BMW can perform a lot of tests to determine how suitable a given technology is as an HMI. “A very simple one uses so-called shutter glasses,” Wisselmann says. “We try to simulate you having to look at the road and then give you maybe a second and a half to look at the infotainment system. We see how long it takes: did you find the navigation target?

“Then we go a stage further – people have tasks to do while driving. We measure  lane deviations, and any critical situations – did they always see the car in front braking, for example. We can measure a lot of technical and behavioural data.”

Reprogrammable instrument displays could provide the answer to managing the amount of data the driver is presented with. 

It will still take a lot of evaluation and optimisation to get the logic right, though. How the display changes would have to be worked out carefully because, he says, nobody wants to make a movie in the instrument cluster: “We want to try to use these technologies but in a way which is not confusing or distracting,” he says.