Apps on your car windshield thanks to Navdy projector

We’re not quite at the point where mobile apps have been freed from their devices, but the ability to interact with them in ways other than pulling out a phone or tablet is definitely on the rise. Now Navdy, a company based in San Francisco, has a way to have apps appear right on the inside of your car windshield.

As the Navdy website currently states, it “feels like driving in the future.” It’s possible thanks to Navdy’s dashboard-mounted projector, which is connected to a small Android-based computer and has a microphone and an infrared sensor to allow it to be controlled by voice commands and gestures.

Connecting to your iOS or Android smartphone via Bluetooth, the projector even has split-screen capabilities so it can, for instance, show turn-by-turn navigation on one side and an email notification on the other. To answer the question of the obvious safety concerns, the projector’s images are transparent, and its lens is supposed to focus several feet ahead of the car where you should be looking anyway.

The idea of a true multi-purpose heads-up display (or HUD) has been the stuff of science fiction until now, but if products like this take off, we could literally be looking at our mobile apps differently while behind the wheel. The Navdy projector is available for pre-order at the company’s website, and while it’s eventually going to retail for $499, early adopters can get one for $299 plus $20 shipping.

(via The Verge)