There was a very interesting invitation during the Chinese GP to spend half a session in the back of the Mercedes AMG Petronas garage, in a viewing gallery for the team’s VIPs. This allows them not only to see what is going on in the pit, but also to listen in to team radio and to enjoy the team’s augmented reality technology that has been provided by partner Epson, in order to give the visitors access to more information.
Most of us think of Epson as a manufacturer of printers, but today the Seiko Epson Corporation has diversified into a number of new technologies including new generation projectors, sensing systems, industrial robots and smart glasses. The company introduced its Moverio technology to F1 in Australia, which meant that the Mercedes VIPs can not only watch the team in action, but can enjoy a range of user-selected content, ranging from 
personnel information to videos explaining different aspects of the team’s activities and live social media feeds. The content is overlaid on the lenses of the glasses and this means that the team can use it to explain such things as the anatomy of a pit stop, who is who in the garage and much more.
Motion sensors in the Moverio BT-200 eyewear allow the viewers to select what they want to see using eye tracking technology. This explains why the various F1 journalists pictured above (including me) all appear to be looking in different directions, either watching the garage activity, or trying out other features such as the time sheets that appear in the glasses as well. It is certainly a fascinating technology and one can imagine it might be used not only for VIPs, but also in the future to help engineering teams to identify problems and find 
ways to fix them. If one imagines a mechanic looking at a complex assembly, with glasses fitted with a camera, he might, for example, be able to get access to images of how the various parts work correctly or advice from engineer who could be watching the same footage on the other side of the world at Mercedes in Brackley. The idea is already being used by some Epson service engineers when they are out on the road.
The other thing that could come from such a system is access to the same technology for F1 fans at home in front of their TVs. There is still plenty to be developed, but the concept is certainly fascinating.
joeblogsf1 
Like I think you mentioned in a previous blog post, we are only at the beginning of the digital technology revolution
Wow, very cool that you were able to try this. I remember briefly seeing a shot of these at Australia/Bahrain. How did you find the user interface for the eye tracking? Were you able to view the driver’s cockpit cam or one of the pit crew’s helmet cams?
Very jealous you were able to try this!
My first thought on seeing this was that it must be a drivers eye view in 3D. That would be a fun experience. Using it how you did is very sci fi, or it was any way!
Now if we could get F1 races free-to-air and get something like this piped over pay-per-view, I think it’d be a nice balance between attracting a new audience and premium content that people would be happy to pay for.
Or at least gripe less over paying for.
Or move back to griping about the sound…. anyway, seems amazing.
That’s a business model I could get behind!
Cool technology, and great to see the F1 teams at the forefront of bringing new innovations to real-world use. In the future your local service centre will be able to save hours on changing a particular component because they have the workshop manual in their eye while they’re under the car.
Please don’t big it up too much. The little feller in Biggin Hill will be grasping for his share and putting it out of my reach. I’ve can only afford a Seiko.
Joe: the stuff around overlaying instructions / etc. for mechanics is old hat, having been pioneered in the military and civil aerospace world. There were tech demonstrations as far back as the early 1990s.
BMW showed their system for use in dealerships to help technicians to service your car back in 2014 – including talking then about putting them on the very Epson kit you’ve been playing with.
It is an exciting world, but F1 is nowhere near the cutting edge of it.
Eye tracking has been around for some time, Apache attack helicopters have been using it for a long time, but it wasn’t available for mere mortals to use, as it was on the secret list. From what I can gather, in F1 it might be a solution looking for a problem at this time.
I might be an old fart, but too many ideas to boost the F1 show will only distract the tv spectator from the main event – unless it becomes possible to view past events of the viewers choice. For example, watch the start of Sunday’s race from various viewpoints, not those chosen and edited by FOM. That could never happen all the time F1 is run by a company that is over 10 years behind the times and expects instant returns on a fiver investment.
Actually, commercial eye-tracking has been around since early 90s.
Both Apple and Microsoft used it in their “Usability Labs” when developing user interfaces for their products, although recently the latter seems to have dropped the ball a little bit…
It depends upon what you mean by eye tracking. Joe was talking about turning the head – so head-tracking, not eye-tracking – hence his comment about everyone looking in different directions. Head-tracking is the baseline requirement for any VR / AR system.
Eye tracking is another game entirely, but I see no evidence of that here. There *is* an aftermarket (SMI) upgrade available for the Moverio BT-200 that will allow eye tracking, but the HMDs worn by Joe and co in the picture do not seem to be so equipped.
The obvious long term engineering live race use is to “see” the car in 3D in rendered flythrough mode with data shown at all points of relevance, probably with colour indicating status. This would give instant live health levels. On a component or system turning yellow, the engineer would zoom into that sub directory or assembly to get detailed information. On the other hand they may well prefer to keep the current system.
Off topic: Joe, this is an interesting article talking about the difficulty monetising mass produced media-bites online.
One giant in the space, Buzzfeed, is claiming 400million viewers/month – however converting that to only 4cents/year income. NewYorkTimes makes $5/year on a unique visitor.
“Valuations: to put it bluntly, based on their respective revenue figures (actual for the NYT and speculated for BF) and their respective valuation multiples, either the Times should be valued at $16 billion or BuzzFeed should be worth only $196 million. Again: even if BuzzFeed’s real figures are much higher than reported last week, a major mark-down looms”
The first thing that popped into my mind upon reading this : BernieVision (it really existed; and I never saw it).
Joe there are already examples of augmented reality being used by manufacturers outside of F1 to assist mechanics.
I know you don’t like links so I won’t post one but do a search on KTM augmented reality service manual and have a look. There was an article on it a few months back on Ars Technica.
They aren’t using glasses at the moment but the more widely available iPad. Probably because of availabilty/cost for the time being.
I look forward to the day when it will be possible to get a “seat” at any GP around the world via VR or Augmented Reality in your living room, whilst being able to access content such as that you describe.
If Bernie had any sort of clue about technology or had the right advisors he’d be all over that right now. Massive potential.
The TV model will live for a few more years yet, but it’s headed to extinction.
Michael Crichton had VR aircraft service manuals in “Airframe”, published in 1996. What took ’em so long 😉
‘If Bernie had any sort of clue about technology or had the right advisors he’d be all over that right now. Massive potential.
The TV model will live for a few more years yet, but it’s headed to extinction.’
Bless him, he doesn’t even get facebook or twitter. Can you imagine him partnering with Oculus Rift etc to produce a VR F1 ? That would be incredible to use, but he’d wanna rinse as much cash out of it as possible.
New printer on the way for you then 🙂
How corrupt your mind is…
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/magic-leap-vr/
This is where it’s happening, implications are huge across all industries.
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