The sun visor is an overlooked invention -- you only realise how beneficial it is when you come around a corner and boom, the sun is melting your retinas. Personally, I never really use the sun visor in my car, it blocks too much of the road ahead for me, so I just trade my eyes for a better view of the road. If you’re in the same boat, our prayers have been answered! Because Bosch’s engineers seem to have solved our problem.
The Bosch Virtual Visor combines a clear LCD panel, a driver facing camera and sophisticated artificial intelligence that tracks the drivers face while identifying features like the nose, ears and mouth using algorithms to only block the glare of the sun that is hitting the driver’s eyes, and not a large part of the road ahead. So while you move relative to the sun, while cornering for example, the hexagonal pixels will rearrange and darken the area necessary. It aims to decrease the risk of accidents caused by temporary blindness, which occur twice as many times as any other weather-related accident.
Steffen Berns, president of Bosch Car Multimedia said, “Some of the simplest innovations make the greatest impact, and Virtual Visor changes the way drivers see the road.”
The Virtual Visor seems like the perfect solution then, but it’s still a concept and it will take time for it to hit production and even longer for it to appear on mainstream cars. Bosch has promised that they have every intention to put this into production cars.