Rome – No more sun in the eyes, Bush’s word. Farewell to the plastic sun visors, the ones we usually arrange the toll booth ticket. In their place is something more modern and technological, and the German multinational has already given it a name: Virtual Visor. The dimensions are almost the same as the fin, and in fact a little higher, with a difference in transparency. On its surface, imagine a honeycomb grid through which you can look at the road. An internal video camera has been placed on this network, which monitors faces from behind the wheel using artificial intelligence to “paint” specific points on the face, such as the eyes, nose and mouth. An essential way to identify shadows on the face.
At this point, an algorithm that analyzes the driver’s point of view intervenes, blocking only the portion of the fin through which the light touches the driver’s eyes. The rest of the screen remains transparent, without limiting areas of the field of view. The principle is to hide only a small part of the virtual visor, the part where the sun’s rays hit, just as if a pair of Ray Bans had suddenly fallen on the driver’s nose.
“In the early stages of development, we found users were adjusting their traditional sunblock to always cast shade on their eyes,” explains Jason Zink, technical expert at Bosch North America and one of the makers of Virtual Visor. “This behavior was instrumental in helping us develop the product concept and system design. As with many early stage ideas, we worked with limited capital and resources. The original prototype we used in the concept premiere was created using an old LCD screen we retrieved from scraps.”
In the US, Virtual Visor has already been awarded the “Best of Innovation” award in the cabin entertainment and safety category, receiving top marks from a jury made up of designers, engineers and technology media representatives.
“For most motorists around the world, today’s sun visor is not enough to protect against bright sunlight, especially at sunrise and sunset, when the bottom sun can significantly reduce visibility,” concludes Stephen Burns, president of Bosch Car Multimedia. “But sometimes the simplest innovations are the most effective.”
