Samsung subsidiary Harman has acquired a German software company that focuses on automotive augmented and mixed reality.
Automotive tech company Apostera and its AR and MR software solutions “will expand Harman’s automotive product offerings and position the company at the forefront of automotive AR/MR experience design,” Harman said in a release.
Christian Sobottka, president of Harman’s Automotive Division, said that Apostera’s software is capable of “seamlessly blending AR with the physical environment” and can “[transform] any display in the car into a richly contextual experience.”
Apostera’s mixed reality solution combines Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and sensor fusion in a hardware-agnostic software platform. Combined with HARMAN’s digital cockpit product portfolio, these new software solutions will bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds.
Augmented-reality heads-up displays (HUDs) in vehicles have been available for decades, in which simple digitalized information such as rate of speed or the next step in navigation is viewable as an overlay projected onto the vehicle’s windshield within the driver’s line-of-sight. Automotive manufacturers have also extended their use of augmented or mixed reality to the format of virtual showrooms for potential customers to interact with and learn more about their vehicles and in service departments to expedite the repair process. In January 2021, Panasonic Automotive launched a new AR HUD that it said was “AI driven”, and included eye-tracking capabilities, an expanded field of view, multi-color navigation graphics and “real-time situational awareness” with the system’s ability to update within 300 milliseconds and provide visual detection of objects and cyclists or pedestrians.
Fortune Business Insights has said that the automotive AR market was about $4.5 billion in 2021 and forecasted that it will increase at a compound annual growth rate of more than 18% through 2028, reaching a market size of $14.4 billion by the end of the forecast period.
