Volvo Cars has teamed up with Varjo, a Finnish maker of augmented reality headsets, to create a mixed reality headset to wear whilst driving.
The Varjo XR-1 headset provides photorealistic mixed or virtual reality, making it possible to drive a real car while wearing the headset, adding virtual elements or complete features that seem real to both the driver and the car’s sensors.
The XR-1 adds high-definition cameras to the headset and enables mixed reality, allowing Volvo Cars designers and engineers to drive future cars and evaluate all features in a simulation environment.
“Instead of the usual static way of evaluating new products and ideas, we can test concepts on the road immediately. This approach offers considerable potential cost savings by identifying priorities and clearing bottlenecks much earlier in the design and development process,” says Volvo Cars chief technology officer Henrik Green.
Safety experts drive real cars while wearing the headset at Volvo’s research facilities in Sweden, testing virtual active safety systems on the real-life environment.
The XR-1 has eye-tracking technology, accessing how drivers use a new functionality and if they are distracted.
“From the very beginning, our vision has been to create a product that can seamlessly merge the real and the virtual together,” says Varjo chief executive officer Niko Eiden.
“The incredibly advanced ways in which Volvo Cars uses the XR-1 show that Varjo’s technology enables things that have been previously impossible. Together with Volvo we have started a new era in professional mixed reality.”
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