Projection Type Interactive Head-up Display Based on Retroreflective Surface and Leap Motion Sensor

An automotive head-up display (HUD) is a display medium that provides the digital information in-front of the user or driver without causing any deviation from their direct view. The early head-up-displays were primarily developed for military aviation to project flight information in front of the pilot. However, with the recent development in optics, electronics and multimedia applications, the HUD have found its way into variety of applications including automotive interactive information systems. In this paper, we present a high luminant and transparent interactive HUD display enabled by the micro-structured retroreflective surface. The high brightness is supported by exploiting the narrow angle scattering property of the retroreflective surfaces while the transparency is achieved by using a transparent glass screen at 45 degrees. The real-time interaction with the displayed content is provided by using leap motion sensor. The interactive user interface is developed in Unity3D. The experimental setup is demonstrated using the commercial retroreflective fabric and DLP multimedia projector. The developed system is tested in a regular car in outdoor settings. Our results show high perceived brightness of the display within the viewing angle of ±10 degrees. Transmission efficiency of the developed prototype was > 60%.