A motorcycle HUD helmet derived from a Fighter Jet technology

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Let’s be honest, riding a motorcycle in a new city and using a GPS at the same time, could be a very tough job. The amount of traffic we find in major cities, discourages us from doing both, even if you have a GPS-mounted near the instrument cluster.  But I think we might have a solution from Russia.

A Russian start-up called Livemap is developing an head-up display (HUD) helmet that has built-in GPS navigation and voice control. The company recently received $300,000 (Rs 1.87 crore) grant from the Russian Ministry of Science to continue their development efforts. The company has taken some of the technology cues from the helmet worn by fighter-jet pilots  as it projects turn-by-turn  instructions directly onto the helmet visor. 

Livemap is using the Android as its base platform to develop this new HUD helmet. The overall size of the helmet will be larger than the traditional ones as it has to accommodate two 3000mAh batteries, speakers and rest of the hardware that makes this technology work. The production version of the helmet is expected to hit the international market soon with a price tag of $2,000(Rs 1.24 lakh). However, there is an early bird discount of $500 (Rs 34,000). 

Check out the video below that shows the development phase of this new helmet. I would like to own one but provided the price is not on the expensive side in India, which I think is very unlikely. But I think the Indian market is not very mature for a helmet like this, where lot of people still don’t understand the importance of wearing a helmet. Plus, I would like to use it once before I comment on the usability aspect as the information displayed on the visor might be quite distracting for some of us.