Background Scene Dominant Color Based Visibility Enhancement of Head-Up Display

Images projected from HUD (Head-up Display) are always overlaid with moving background scene. In such cases, drivers suffer from understanding instinctively the HUD information. Visibility enhancement of HUD information is very important for drivers to recognize easily and quickly the information. In this paper, we propose two visibility enhancement methods of HUD image, which are based on the dominant color of background scene. One is to change the color of symbols, another is to add different color outline to symbols of HUD information, depending on the similarity between HUD information and background dominant colors. To compare the color similarity, HSI (Hue, Saturation, Intensity) color domain is used. The proposed methods are designed to minimize the color change, so as to maintain the meaning of symbol color. Through the simulations, we show that the proposed color changing and outline methods are effective to improve the instinctive understanding.