At CES 2024, the French company Eyelights showed us its future of the automotive interface. Revolutionary ? Maybe. In any case, we were amazed by the possibilities offered by this technology. Explanations.
Since 2016, the young Toulouse company Eyelights has been interested in head-up display. After having cut its teeth on kits to be installed in motorcycle helmets, Eyelights settled on the man-machine interface on board automobiles. We discovered its latest solutions on board a demonstrator installed in a Volvo XC40 at CESand we took in “the full view”.
Screens even on the windows
It’s an avatar with our first name displayed on the rear window that welcomes us aboard the Volvo XC40 DIYed for the demonstration. And this is only the first screen – unusual to say the least – among a plethora of others that are installed in the car. “ Rest assured, there will not be everything in the cars that use our solutions », reassures us Romain Duflot, the CEO. “ It’s just that here we have put everything into being able to show the state of our research.”
Because even if the name of the company is unknown to the general public, Eyelights is already well established in the small world of equipment manufacturers. On the motorcycle side, a major Japanese helmet manufacturer is about to integrate its solutions into series production and during the last ECMA show, the brand signed for integration on 500,000 motorcycle windshields. On the car side, Eyelights has been working with AGC since 2020, with whom it supplies BMW. “ This third generation offers better contrast, better definition and better brightness”continues Romain Duflot.
Also read: Apple Car could use an augmented reality head-up display
Speech, touch, vision
Whether you are a driver or a passenger, we have before our eyes different holographic screens or projectors whose contents are controlled with tactile surfaces. As curious as it may seem, it’s not about the screen. Different gestures, which we imagine are quite simple to integrate, allow you to modify the displays and call up different content. Manipulations that can also be done directly with the voice. Moreover, the avatar projected in the center, at the bottom of the windshield, is none other than ChatGPT – him again. Ultimately, it will be interfaced with the Microsoft Azure cloud. As for the entire system, it is based on an NVIDIA platform certified for the automobile, that is to say powerful enough to manage an application that must work on mountains of data constantly.
Under the eyes of the driver, the demonstrator offers a holographic projection on the instrument cluster. The content is of course customizable, but the most important thing here is that it seemed clear, responsive and well-defined to us.
Above, directly in the field of vision and in the lower corner of the windshield, we see another projection, also customizable. It constantly adapts the angle of the image to follow the gaze. The information seems to be placed on a screen whose central axis allows it to always offer the best view depending on the place from which it is viewed. It’s probably a bit gimmicky, but it works.
Eyelights technology coming to BMW from 2026
And then, on the passenger side, we find the same type of screen in the corner of the windshield, which can be used to display almost anything you want, whether multimedia, telephony or other applications. Just below, the demonstrator offers us a cinema session (Netflix), consult an Instagram feed or even read the latest headlines from a major daily newspaper. For the immersive side, speakers are integrated into the headrests, which also allows you to listen to your own program without disturbing the other occupants too much.
While all this may seem very futuristic, it is actually very close to the present. The manufacturer BMW is already implementing a few bricks of this device to a model to be released in 2026 and, according to our young CEO, “ other brands will follow by 2030 “. The most interesting thing about all this is that there is no question of it costing more, neither for the manufacturer nor for the end customer. In short, we wait and see!