Scanned Beam Laser Technology Combined with Direct Green Laser Diodes Offers a Configurable Automotive HUD Solution with Superior HMI Performance

摘要

Head-up displays (HUD) in automobiles and other vehicles have been shown to significantly reduce accident rates by keeping the driver's eyes on the road. With critical information being displayed within the driver's direct line of sight and at a focal distance floating in front of the car, distractions caused by looking down at center console panels or instrument clusters are eliminated. The requirements for automotive HUDs are quite demanding especially in terms of brightness, dimming range, supplied power, and size. Scanned-beam laser display technology is particularly well-suited to this application since the lasers can be very efficiently relayed to the driver's eyes and the lasers are only turned on where the light is needed in the image. This helps to provide the required brightness while minimizing power and avoiding a background glow that disturbs the see-through experience. With the emergence of direct green laser diodes, the next-generation scanned-beam automotive HUD display engines will replace the frequency-doubled green lasers with these new direct green lasers. This is significant in that it will enable high-performance, low-cost and improved reliability embedded solutions for OEMs as well as specialty vehicle and automotive aftermarket HUD products. In addition to the incorporation of direct green lasers in the HUD products, this paper will discuss the flexibility offered by the scanned beam solution to very tailorable HUD applications as well as its application to front or rear projected instrument cluster displays.