New technologies are introduced on a daily basis, however, not every new app is a good app.On occasions, a real-life changing technology appears on the market, and while it is not a good idea to go out and be the first to buy it, sometimes breaking your teeth on a new appliance is a good way to increase your general capabilities and be ready for the upgrades.
One such technology is Navdy, while aircraft pilots have been using eye sync helmets for decades, it took a while for this tech to reach civilian uses. Invariably, many new technologies and applications start out being developed for military use and after a while leak out into civilian and commercial usage.
What is Navdy?
Navdy is a way of looking at everything on one screen. It takes the F-35 helmet and puts the information projection module onto the dash of a car. Navdy will project any information you need on the front window screen of your car. Overlaying the information against the oncoming view, allows the driver to concentrate on driving and not having to look around for data.
Eye Focused Management
One of the key issues in ride-share driving is the driver's constant need to look at different areas of the car while driving. Looking at the app, watching the passenger, checking the mirror, looking at Waze, reading the dash dials and dealing with the entertainment system.Drivers eye focus is constantly moving around. In a familiar surrounding, drivers can manage their eye contact easily, for rented cars, it's harder.
Here is a breakdown of the eye-focus requirements made on a daily basis:
- Steering and controlling a vehicle through a sea of vehicles within a set route.
- Watching for any interesting changes and incentives on the Uber/Lyft app.
- Setting and analyzing navigational options on a cell phone or mobile device.
- Safely organizing and coordinating passenger pick-up and drop-off instances.
- Maintaining a social interaction with many different passenger types.
- Dealing with unusual situations and circumstances (unruly passengers)
- Watching out for law enforcement officers that like to bother Uber/Lyft drivers.
While more experienced drivers might be able to juggle all this naturally, every 5 seconds of eye focus time is the equivalent of a football field length of driving!
The Navdy Tech
Navdy designed a HUD, a heads-up display unit. This unit takes all your app and car inputs and places it onto one transparent display screen.
Navdy tech combines the smartphone, hand gesture recognition technology, steering wheel dial and voice control. (Apart from voice control) All actions are linked via Bluetooth. The control dial enables the driver to switch between screens.
The HUD will display car speed, RPM, fuel status, mileage, time/distance and gas/mileage as well as all the other important bits of information such as maps, routes, messages from the Uber/Lyft App and app surge/guarantees, etc.
All these bits of information, collected and collated per screen save so much eye focus time, that you reduce the overall missed driving eye contact time by up to 50%, which is a lot of regained eye contact time.
ODB Integration
The HUD is connected to the cars ODB II port which enables it to read all car systems and functions and display them on screen.
Gesture Management
By moving your hand left or right, you accept an incoming message or phone call. This simply had gesture leads you to view important information or filter calls as you need. Saving you a lot of hassle when dealing with incoming calls that you don't want to take, as well as reading messages that were not urgent.
Navdy: Google Siri
By pressing the center button in the Navdy wheel, the driver opens up Google Siri. The driver can then perform certain voice-activated tasks such as respond to messages, make phone calls and even record messages and send them without taking their eyes off the road and freeing up the hands to holding the steering wheel. The beauty of this system is that it leaves your hands free, which is both safe for driving as well as reducing the chance of being pulled over by a traffic cop.
Navigation
Navdy uses google maps, so you use the Navdy companion app to navigate the same way you would when using google maps or Waze. The HUD has built-in GPS witch and also maintains a lot of offline maps, which allows the driver to input the pickup and drop off locations. The HUD will then project some driving options that the driver may choose from, all this without using hands. Another fine feature is the ability to combine maps so you and check out a direction without actually leaving the current map, and look at other options within the current GPS frame.
Navdy Benefits
The integration of Navdy into daily driving will improve safety as well as reduce driver eye-strain. The greatest improvement is the fact that so much data can be projected onto the HUD screen, will give drivers the ability to control their routes, raise their efficiency and reduce their expenses all through proper ergonomic management.
Ergonomics
For those of you unfamiliar with this word, Ergonomics is the science of dealing with special movements. That means how the human physically reacts within a specified environment. Factories are designed using ergonomics to create more efficient human-machine interfaces. Pilot cock-pits are all ergonomically designed to minimize pilot movements. Navdy is an ergonomic app, designed to streamline and create an efficient and economic environment for drivers.
Uber/Lyft Integration
Navdy recognized this market potential, with millions of possible drivers around the world, it would be beneficial to incorporate the HUD with the Uber and Lyft apps, also, by combining the HUD with the cars ODB II, it could efficiently record and report all driving actions per time slot. BY combining this to another app, mileage and expense reporting app, the hybrid Navdy/Uber/Management system would provide a comprehensive app that increases safety, decreases driver hand and eye movement, increase expense reporting and generating good driving statistics. It would also increase the GPS quality since Navdy can show the passenger which way you are driving down the street and as such offers a much better positioning system than standard GPS enabling customers to choose a driver based on distance and direction of travel.