I Try ‘Driving’ With the Mini Goggles
Driving while goggled. (Photo: Dan Tynan/Yahoo)
I would never wear Google Glass out in public. Nor would I wear the pair of augmented reality goggles I tried on at San Francisco’s Mini showroom last night, the Mini Augmented Vision glasses.
But I would for sure wear them while driving.
Photo: Mini
I’ve long believed that augmented reality glasses — glasses that project information onto the world as you see it, through very nerdy headgear — could be great for people doing very specific tasks: Surgery. Engine repair. Flying jets (this already happens). And maybe even driving a car. Just not walking around. We’re not ready for that.
Mini (technically, BMW, which owns Mini) worked with tech companies Qualcomm and ODG to develop these prototype driving glasses, and it hosted a little demo event this week. I got to try on the glasses and take them for a virtual spin in a car facing a big projection screen.
Into the Mini holodeck
Photo: Rafe Needleman/Yahoo
The glasses show navigational info in your field of view. Hovering over the hood of your car are your speed and the speed limit. These numbers stay out of your way, stuck in space, more or less, no matter where your head is pointing. There is a little bit of positional jitter. It wasn’t too terrible, but the Microsoft HoloLens and the Oculus Rift, both of which I have tried, do a better job of registering your head’s position and making sure that virtual images stay locked into position.
Related: I Try Microsoft’s Crazy HoloLens
Current car head-up displays, the kind that project info onto your windshield, can display speed, navigation, and car status. But the Mini glasses do a lot more. When used for navigation, for example, as you approach a turn, a very cool animation projects onto the lane in front of you and shows how to make the turn into the new road.
Driver’s-eye view. (Photo: Mini)
The glasses also let you see through your car, sort of. When you’re parking, you can look to where your wheels meet the curb, and you’ll see a little inset video of your tire overlaid on your car interior. Three cameras on the right side of the car feed the image to the glasses.
The car has sensors that can detect other hazards, and it will put an alert in your display to turn your head to see them through the car, even if the car itself would block your view: A low-riding skateboarder and an errant basketball were demo cases for this.
There’s a camera to the right of the “S” badge. (Photo: Rafe Needleman/Yahoo)
The software can also attach information to real-world objects, such as buildings, as you look at them. For example, as you approach a parking structure, the glasses could display pricing or parking availability.
Mini glasses are integrated into the Mini car’s electronics, so you don’t ever need to fiddle with the glasses when they’re on your head, even though the glasses do have buttons on them. To respond to an alert on your display, you press the OK button on your car’s steering wheel.
Captain Tomorrow
Mini has tried to make the goggles, which are based on a model by ODG called the R-6, look Mini-like. The frame over the AR glasses is available in several jaunty colors. I wore the brass-and-brownish pair, which has a vaguely steampunk look. Still, they make you look like a dork, and the glasses are heavy and large. They are not, as I’ve said, something I would be caught out in the world wearing. In the car, though, why not? Especially if they feed me useful information or help me keep my eyes on the road.
But Mini also sees these glasses as a brand extension, so it’s added out-of-the-car features too. In a video, we’re shown how the glasses will guide their owner from an enormous, beautifully decorated apartment to where the owner’s Mini is parked on the street, miraculously without any broken windows. And in my hands-on demo, after I got out of the car, the glasses showed arrows to where I was to walk to give them back to the demo minders.
Even a Qualcomm rep I spoke with at the event seemed to agree that these features were unnecessary. Furthermore, they add complexity to the software and hardware and affect battery-life requirements. With any luck, Mini will prioritize simplicity and cost over its desire to make its buyers look like comic book heroes, and will focus on making the glasses the best possible in-car product. Only.
Mini doesn’t expect to bring this particular model to market. Instead, in a press release, Mini says, “In the future, augmented reality glasses will supplement this technology with an alternative solution.”
I, for one, welcome this. I want a fighter-pilot display over my world when I drive. But for walking around and hanging out with friends, maybe not so much.
