Promising BME Spin-off Company Secures Funding From Automotive Investor

A major investor has joined one of BME's most promising spin-off companies, providing substantial support for its innovative projected display at a crucial stage of development. At aHead Photonics Kft., 90 per cent of the developers either graduated from BME, earned their doctorate there, or teach at the University, and the company also employs a number of interns from among BME students.

As we reported earlier, the innovation eliminates many of the shortcomings of the devices known as head-up displays (HUDs), giving it strong prospects in the international automotive industry, which has long considered the projection of information onto the windscreen as an important direction for development.

"The investor is the Innova-1 Automotive Private Equity Fund, which specialises in automotive investments. The amount is not public, but I can say that with this support, our team can now work for two years with peace of mind on solving the professional challenges lying ahead,” explained Pál Koppa, lead researcher of the project, Head of the Department of Atomic Physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and university professor, to bme.hu.

Two of the ideas developed by the founders of aHead Photonics are already protected by international patents, 

and more are likely to follow. One addresses a common imperfection of HUDs – ghosting – by eliminating it with the help of the so-called Brewster effect. Polarised sunglasses also make use of this phenomenon, albeit in a different way; this is why, when wearing such glasses, the image of a conventional projected display may sometimes appear faded.

The other invention prevents sunlight or other ambient light from being reflected into the driver’s eyes by the glass projection surface placed beneath the windscreen, using a special solution based on tiny lamellae. These innovations can significantly increase the size of the field of view compared with similar systems, and the use of augmented reality makes it possible to display more information.

The two patents, both owned by BME, have the significant advantage that they are not expected to increase the cost of the system compared with existing technologies. Of course, this will only be certain when the product goes into mass production. For the time being, it is at TRL 5, meaning that its functionality has been validated in a laboratory environment. It will be at TLR 6 if it meets the parameters for in-car installation, including size, brightness, temperature tolerance, etc.

Testing environment

Pál Koppa estimates that 

the vehicle-integrated prototype could be ready by the summer of 2027, while launching production would still take a few more years beyond that. 

The team’s industry network could be of great help in this respect, which is why it has for some time been working together with Indupro Kft., a company specialising in laser processing, and is also actively collaborating with SMR Automotive, a manufacturer of rear-view mirrors and electronic imaging systems. The business model assumes that the new display will also be brought to market jointly with automotive suppliers, which, through efficient mass production and their industrial connections, will be able to deliver the innovative product to several major car manufacturers.

Pál Koppa

This is not to say that car manufacturers would be indifferent to such a development, in fact, HUD technology is a particularly competitive field even within the automotive industry. BMW, for instance, has shown keen interest in the innovations of aHead Photonics, not least because its engineers are themselves working on some of the very problems addressed by these patents.

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