Topic: the phantom car patent information patent search

[piersdad]

Phantom car

Using in-car satellite navigation on unfamiliar roads, in bad weather or in heavy traffic can be a bore. But soon it could be as simple as following the car ahead, if a patent filed recently by Microsoft takes off.

Instead of studying an on-screen map or listening to spoken instructions, the system lets a driver pursue a cartoon car projected onto the windscreen in front of them. The navigation system checks a car?s location and calculates a route in the usual way, but the driver follows the ghost car as if it were the leader of a convoy.

The on-screen car could also convey traffic and weather information by changing colour or size. And its ghostly cartoon character should make it sufficiently distinguishable from real cars and traffic as seen through the windscreen, the patent says.

Read about the ghost-following patent? http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220050171690%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20050171690&RS=DN/20050171690
this link goes to the patent office and if you click on the --boolean-- link you can search the patent office for any thing you want