Creating an actual see-through hood is something no automaker is willing to do, but what if you could see what’s going on underneath your car? Land Rover has used augmented reality to create a transparent hood that will provide a better driving experience.
With only a week left till the New York International Auto Show, Land Rover has unveiled this new technology and are calling it Transparent Bonnet. The hood of the concept is not transparent at all, but appears to be with a mixture of crafty camera placement and virtual reality.
In the demonstration video, Land Rover has equipped the SUV with a wide-angle camera situated in the camera’s grill. The camera view starts where the driver’s view ends and goes from front and below the grill to beneath the engine and between the two front wheels. The video can be seen below.
The most amazing part, however, is the heads-up display which projects the car’s data such as speed and clearance onto the windshield. The Transparent Bonnet technology projects the output from the camera onto the windshield, and is perfectly positioned so as to give the car a semi-transparent look. The driver is able to see both the road below and the orientation of the front wheels.
This technology could greatly help drivers when they are going off-road, such as climbing a steep incline or maneuvering in a confined space. At the moment the Transparent Bonnet is just a concept and Land Rover has not given any details about when it will be available in the market.
