Road to the future
The WayRay project is the finalist of GenerationS 2013. This is one of the most ambitious and unusual startups in Moscow, which received high marks from the competition jury and a cash prize of 500,000 rubles.
Today, we talk with Mikhail Svarichevsky (@BarsMonster), the technical director of the project, designed to bring scenes of many fantastic films to life and make available before only mass technology to the military.
SK: Tell us in general about the project, what product are you doing?
MS: The main idea is WayRay Navion, a projection system of navigation information “through” the windshield, like on fighter jets. Then the driver sees instructions on driving 4+ meters from the car - he does not have to look and refocus. This allows the driver to move less time away from the road - which is more convenient and safer. The second product is WayRay Element, I think about it below.
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SK: How did you get into the project?
MS: Oddly enough, Habr helped here. Vitaly Ponomarev, the founder of the company, read my articles and invited me to talk. The project turned out to be very interesting for me - not only electronics and programming, but also optics, lasers and holography. It was interesting to understand this, everything was very well laid down on my interests.
SK: What is the fundamental difference between WayRay Navion from existing navigators, and especially HUD?
MS: In the very idea of ​​HUD displays, there is nothing supernatural - just as long as we rarely see them in civilian applications. In some models of cars since the 1980s, primitive HUD displays have been built in. We want to make a universal system that can be installed in any car. In addition, we are working to reduce the size of the system through the use of holographic elements - this will allow us to obtain a larger angular size of the projected image with the same system dimensions.
SK: What will be the end device?
MS: WayRay Navion - will be a box mounted on the dashboard so as not to block the view to the driver. Inside - an on-board computer, a projection system with optics that shines on a transparent hologram on the windshield. The driver looks through this transparent hologram - and sees both the road and the navigation information we want to display.
SK: What about production: China, or is something being done in Russia?
MS: Of course, at the development stage, it is preferable to work with domestic factories - in order to spend less time on delivery and customs. For example, mirrors for the first pilot plant were made in Russia, they tried optics — but did not work: local production needed volumes, and they were not interested in messing with prototypes. I had to give it to a factory in China - of course, volumes are also needed there, but they understand that no one will be able to enter the series without a prototype.
With electronics - we need printed circuit boards for the 6th accuracy class, in Russia they do it - but this is a kind of exclusive. Further, if you collect prototypes here - then all the details need to be transported separately through customs (local distributors have far from all). Therefore, it was naturally faster and safer to produce and assemble prototype electronics while also in China.
SK: How will the system as a whole be controlled (will it use a smartphone, touchscreen in a car, voice commands or some special gadget)?
MS: At the moment it is a smartphone (Android / iPhone) and voice control. In the foreseeable future, we want to add optical gesture recognition. Naturally, with a separate physical touch / LCD screen, the meaning of the whole idea is lost.
SK: What is the status of the project now and what are you working on now?
MS: At the moment, the first revision of electronics for Navion and Element has been developed and went into production, we are expecting to receive it from day to day.
The first revision of optics (still with large dimensions, without holographic elements) was developed, came from a factory in China, assembled and showed the results completely corresponding to the calculated ones.
On this system, you can control the distance to the imaginary image (from infinity to 3-4 meters in front of the driver), watch how people react to the image and debug the UI.
We recorded the first holograms on a silver-based material last year; now we are recording samples of holograms on a polymeric material, which should provide better control over the diffraction efficiency of the resulting hologram.
SK: What about the second project - Element? And what is Autoyoga?
MS: The element is a companion product, is inserted into the OBD connector in the vehicle, and allows you to collect parameters and statistics for the vehicle in real time. It can work with both a cell phone and Navion. Naturally, such products with a simpler implementation are already being made (including by the Chinese) - we need to provide greater opportunities for use. Autoyoga is, in a first approximation, something in between actor and an assessment of ride quality - to give the driver feedback on how well he is driving, what can be improved.
SK: What are your future development plans?
MS: This year, we have to get the final samples of the Element and Navion, as finished solutions, run them in cars with real users and begin mass production. Naturally, there is still a lot of work on this path, especially in optics and holography. There are no special surprises for electronics and programming. In the longer term, we are carrying out the idea of ​​WayRay Cloud: through WayRay Cloud all the machines and infrastructure can be integrated into a single whole, which can function more efficiently. But how exactly this will work - for the time being, it’s probably premature to speak.
SK: Give advice to a young guy who reads this article and really wants to create his own high-tech business. What should be the first step to turn a dream into a reality?
MS: One of the main things is the balance between optimism and pessimism. In WayRay, for example, the most important pessimist (realist?) Is me. Excessive optimism in general can often arise from a lack of understanding of the subject area - young innovators are at risk by definition. It is important not to try to bite off a very large piece - there are 1000 small successful startups on Google and Facebook, about which you will never hear the news. "Biting a lot" will have to spend a lot of money investors. And of course you need to remember that I wrote in the article about innovation in Russia as a whole.
Link to the company's website www.wayray.com
Interview for the GenerationS contest was taken by Sergey Kokarev
Today, we talk with Mikhail Svarichevsky (@BarsMonster), the technical director of the project, designed to bring scenes of many fantastic films to life and make available before only mass technology to the military.
SK: Tell us in general about the project, what product are you doing?
MS: The main idea is WayRay Navion, a projection system of navigation information “through” the windshield, like on fighter jets. Then the driver sees instructions on driving 4+ meters from the car - he does not have to look and refocus. This allows the driver to move less time away from the road - which is more convenient and safer. The second product is WayRay Element, I think about it below.
')
SK: How did you get into the project?
MS: Oddly enough, Habr helped here. Vitaly Ponomarev, the founder of the company, read my articles and invited me to talk. The project turned out to be very interesting for me - not only electronics and programming, but also optics, lasers and holography. It was interesting to understand this, everything was very well laid down on my interests.
SK: What is the fundamental difference between WayRay Navion from existing navigators, and especially HUD?
MS: In the very idea of ​​HUD displays, there is nothing supernatural - just as long as we rarely see them in civilian applications. In some models of cars since the 1980s, primitive HUD displays have been built in. We want to make a universal system that can be installed in any car. In addition, we are working to reduce the size of the system through the use of holographic elements - this will allow us to obtain a larger angular size of the projected image with the same system dimensions.
SK: What will be the end device?
MS: WayRay Navion - will be a box mounted on the dashboard so as not to block the view to the driver. Inside - an on-board computer, a projection system with optics that shines on a transparent hologram on the windshield. The driver looks through this transparent hologram - and sees both the road and the navigation information we want to display.
SK: What about production: China, or is something being done in Russia?
MS: Of course, at the development stage, it is preferable to work with domestic factories - in order to spend less time on delivery and customs. For example, mirrors for the first pilot plant were made in Russia, they tried optics — but did not work: local production needed volumes, and they were not interested in messing with prototypes. I had to give it to a factory in China - of course, volumes are also needed there, but they understand that no one will be able to enter the series without a prototype.
With electronics - we need printed circuit boards for the 6th accuracy class, in Russia they do it - but this is a kind of exclusive. Further, if you collect prototypes here - then all the details need to be transported separately through customs (local distributors have far from all). Therefore, it was naturally faster and safer to produce and assemble prototype electronics while also in China.
SK: How will the system as a whole be controlled (will it use a smartphone, touchscreen in a car, voice commands or some special gadget)?
MS: At the moment it is a smartphone (Android / iPhone) and voice control. In the foreseeable future, we want to add optical gesture recognition. Naturally, with a separate physical touch / LCD screen, the meaning of the whole idea is lost.
SK: What is the status of the project now and what are you working on now?
MS: At the moment, the first revision of electronics for Navion and Element has been developed and went into production, we are expecting to receive it from day to day.
The first revision of optics (still with large dimensions, without holographic elements) was developed, came from a factory in China, assembled and showed the results completely corresponding to the calculated ones.
On this system, you can control the distance to the imaginary image (from infinity to 3-4 meters in front of the driver), watch how people react to the image and debug the UI.
We recorded the first holograms on a silver-based material last year; now we are recording samples of holograms on a polymeric material, which should provide better control over the diffraction efficiency of the resulting hologram.
SK: What about the second project - Element? And what is Autoyoga?
MS: The element is a companion product, is inserted into the OBD connector in the vehicle, and allows you to collect parameters and statistics for the vehicle in real time. It can work with both a cell phone and Navion. Naturally, such products with a simpler implementation are already being made (including by the Chinese) - we need to provide greater opportunities for use. Autoyoga is, in a first approximation, something in between actor and an assessment of ride quality - to give the driver feedback on how well he is driving, what can be improved.
SK: What are your future development plans?
MS: This year, we have to get the final samples of the Element and Navion, as finished solutions, run them in cars with real users and begin mass production. Naturally, there is still a lot of work on this path, especially in optics and holography. There are no special surprises for electronics and programming. In the longer term, we are carrying out the idea of ​​WayRay Cloud: through WayRay Cloud all the machines and infrastructure can be integrated into a single whole, which can function more efficiently. But how exactly this will work - for the time being, it’s probably premature to speak.
SK: Give advice to a young guy who reads this article and really wants to create his own high-tech business. What should be the first step to turn a dream into a reality?
MS: One of the main things is the balance between optimism and pessimism. In WayRay, for example, the most important pessimist (realist?) Is me. Excessive optimism in general can often arise from a lack of understanding of the subject area - young innovators are at risk by definition. It is important not to try to bite off a very large piece - there are 1000 small successful startups on Google and Facebook, about which you will never hear the news. "Biting a lot" will have to spend a lot of money investors. And of course you need to remember that I wrote in the article about innovation in Russia as a whole.
Link to the company's website www.wayray.com
Interview for the GenerationS contest was taken by Sergey Kokarev
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/222849/
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