look at the best place to use this
technology. Where should we target
it?” Dr Christmas explains. “One
area that was relatively stable in the
wake of the economic shock was
the automotive market because it
runs such long schedules. From the
start of a concept to producing a
vehicle takes ve years plus, so, a
lot of those vehicle designs were in
process and they had to continue.
They could sustain the higher price
points than the commercial markets
and the technology had a really
strong application in that space.
So, we set about converting the
technology into a head up display
application and we attracted interest
from Jaguar Land Rover.
“We met with Bob Joyce, CTO of
JLR at the time, and he said: ‘that’s
the technology we want’. So, we
partnered back with Alps, we did the
design, they did the manufacturing
and quali cation.”
By October 2014 the rst units
rolled off the production line in Japan
and the rst JLR models with Two
Trees Photonics’ laser holography
HUD platforms shipped in 2015.
The company received a huge
amount of interest as the technology
‘came out of the blue’, leading to a
buyout by American West Coast
augmented reality company DAQRI
in 2016. DAQRI asked Dr Christmas’
team to redesign the platform for
smart glasses. But attention from
the automotive industry never went
away and so in 2018, the companies
separated and Envisics was formed.
“Of course, in the two years
where we’d been acquired, we
didn’t sit on our hands and do
nothing, we made a lot of progress
in terms of the core technology
development,” says Dr Christmas.
“The next six months was
about realising an
automotive product
from that technology
development.
“We’ve had
to develop a hybrid
silicon device that allows
us to electronically
control the speed of light...
that really is at the heart
“We had a
booth at CES and
invited numerous
automotive
companies to
come and see us.
Everybody that
saw it was absolutely
blown away, hugely
impressed. No-one had
ever seen anything quite
of the technology
of the company”
like it: Compact HUD design; large
image size; augmented reality;
in a vehicle. All the things that
traditionally have been very dif cult
to do, there they were in high
quality,” he continues.
“It’s never a straight path. The
journey is always the interesting
part and we’re on a really exciting
journey. It’s just absolutely full on.
We have much more interest than
we can reasonably deal with. We’re
growing the company as quickly as
we can to recognise and realise that
and it’s really really exciting.”
Envisics now has two of ces,
one in Milton Keynes that employs
32 people, and one in Detroit
employing 13 people, around half
of whom are PhDs, expert scientists
and engineers.
MULTIPLE PLANES
HUDs in cars are nothing new,
BMW for example has had them in
some models for several years now.
However, existing technologies
use LED backlit LCD screens to
render images on only one plane
and squander more than 90% of
the illuminating light available
when projecting imagery onto the
windscreen because of the pixels
opening and closing to let light
through from behind. Additionally,
this creates heat, which also wastes
energy.
Envisics’ Dynamic Holographic
Platform is around half the size
Envisics’ Dynamic
Holographic Platform
projects driving
information, route
information and warns
of danger clearly on
multiple planes using
just one projector.
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