Imagine caller ID display in your goggles or bike helmet

[totalmotorcycle]

Imagine caller ID display in your goggles or bike helmet
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - By TODD BISHOP - P-I REPORTER - Seattle Post-Intelligencer - seattlepi.nwsource.com


On bike trails and ski slopes, technological progress is about to encroach a little further into recreational escapism -- and one Seattle company is betting that many people will welcome it.

Motion Research Corp. is coming out with a new line of miniature informational displays, housed in small devices that will attach to bike helmets and ski goggles. Positioned above the eye, in the user's peripheral vision, they will connect wirelessly to mobile phones to show details of incoming calls.

With the first versions, at least, cyclists and skiers will still need to pull their phones from their pockets to take calls. But the displays will let them first glance quickly at incoming phone numbers and the names of callers listed in their digital address books, while still gripping the handlebars or ski poles.

If someone decides to take the call -- after he or she stops riding or skiing, hopefully -- the display will then show the elapsed time.

But how many people will want to be so connected to their phones while ostensibly exercising or enjoying the outdoors?

"You'd be surprised," said Dominic Dobson, Motion Research's president and chief executive, a longtime Seattle resident and former Indy car driver who founded the company in 2003. "I'm amazed at how many people talk now on their cell phones riding up the chairlift."

The products are slated to be unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and released later this year. The company is estimating a retail price of less than $200 for each, Dobson said. The line is dubbed the SportVue BT1, because of the Bluetooth wireless technology used to communicate with the mobile phone.

The displays are designed for a quick glance and shouldn't be a dangerous distraction from the trail or slopes, Dobson said. The characters in the display flash to get the user's attention when a call comes in, but otherwise the positioning is meant to keep the screen in the peripheral vision.

The new bicycle display device will be sold on its own, able to be attached to a variety of existing helmets. The version for skiers will be sold pre-attached to a pair of goggles from a manufacturer that Dobson said he wasn't yet at liberty to identify.



A composite image depicts the view for a motorcyclist using Motion Research's SportVue MC3 display, attached to the helmet. The unit shows speed, rpm, gear position and turn indicators.
The displays are derived from existing Motion Research SportVue devices that attach to motorcycle helmets, showing information such as speed, gear, RPM and police-radar detection. Also at CES, the company will be showing its third-generation motorcycle display, the SportVue MC3. It adds features including turn signal indicators in the miniature display and multicolor text, an upgrade from the original red readout.

Separately, the company also offers its technology for use in various industrial applications.

Motion Research isn't alone in marketing "heads-up displays," as they're known. But Motion's niche is in peripheral vision.

Another local player, Redmond-based Microvision Inc., offers products that display text on a clear lens in front of the eye.

Longtime consumer-electronics industry analyst Tim Bajarin called Motion Research's approach interesting, given the broad interest in cycling and the ubiquity of mobile phones.

"In that sense, there is a target audience," but it's not clear how big it might be, he said.

Dobson, 49, grew up in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood and raced sports cars and Indy cars professionally for many years -- including seven consecutive starts in the Indy 500 between 1988 and 1994. In the 1990s, he co-founded the Seattle-based PacWest Racing Group along with Bruce McCaw and others.

Dobson founded Motion Research in late 2003 based on technology licensed from researchers Pete Purdy and Tom Furness, whom he met during his racing career. The technology traces its roots to early work by Furness on visual display systems for pilots in the Air Force. Furness was also the founding director of the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab.

Motion Research has since developed technology of its own. The company has six employees, plus contract workers.

Dobson said the goal is to reach profitability this year. It has about 30 investors, he said, including some well-known local ones, whom he declined to name.

Motion Research introduced the first SportVue MC1 display for motorcycles in 2005.

"Although it's good, the motorcycle market is not huge ... relative to the larger sports world," Dobson said. By tapping into the larger market for mobile phones, the company hopes to expand its business.