This could be one of the weirdest patents from an automaker we've ever seen. Yes, even weirder than the patent from Ford describing a method to drive a car through mind control. Feast your eyes on General Motors' Autostereoscopic Campfire Display for vehicles.
In plain English, GM has an idea for a system that, among other things, can display a hologram of a campfire for passengers in a car. But that's not actually the weird part. The strangest thing is how GM wants to do it: The patent uses a complicated projection system to beam images directly to your eyeballs.
How does it work, exactly? There are 16 pages in GM's patent application describing the process, seven of which are diagrams filled with more straight and dotted lines than the New Jersey Turnpike. They show how a passenger monitoring system, spatial light modulator, picture generator unit, beam steering device, and all kinds of computer processors work together to project images directly to the eyes of passengers.
The passenger monitoring system keeps track of the people, specifically where their eyes are located. This allows the beam steering device to project images created by the spatial light modulator directly to the eyes. The system can track multiple passengers and project individual images to each person. In fact, the system projects different images to each eye, thus creating a 3D effect. Remember those colorful, geometric images that would reveal a hidden 3D message if you crossed your eyes just right? It's kind of like that.
At least, we think it's like that. The patent mentions numerous scenarios projecting images that are nearly the same, exactly the same, or quite a bit different. It also covers different ways to track people and project images, but they all involve shooting something at your eyeballs at a frequency greater than 30 Hz. Apparently, that's the frequency at which the human eye won't perceive any flickering and combine each two-dimensional image into a single 3D vision.
As for the campfire connection, frankly that's a mystery. We don't see any mention of it beyond the patent's title. Perhaps that's the best example of how this system takes a two-dimensional image and makes it 3D, but it certainly leaves us with more questions than answers. This is billed as an entertainment feature, but could future navigation systems beam directions straight to your eyes? Maybe passengers could watch movies without any possibility of the driver taking a peek?
That said, don't expect to see this anytime soon, if ever. The patent references such a system being used in cars with advanced Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous capabilities.
Source: US Patent and Trademark Office
