Want a heads up display while you’re riding? Honda’s working on a system that provides HUD, and it’s based on your bike, not your helmet.

HUD system designs for motorcycles have been floating around for the past few years, but up until now, they’ve all been based around smart helmets. Along with onboard video recording, mobile device integration and GPS navigation, most smart helmet designs incorporate some sort of heads up display, to give the rider everything from ride information (speed, RPM, etc.) to navigation details.

However, those smart helmets have taken forever to make it to market, and by the time they get here, Honda may have cut the legs out from underneath them, with its own HUD design.

Honda’s design doesn’t need a smart helmet; the HUD system is built into a motorcycle, to be used instead of a gauge cluster or TFT screen.

Nothing’s been officially released, but you can read the Honda patent here (be warned: it’s basically a bunch of technical gobbledygook mixed in with lawyerspeak). However, the gist of all the blathering is that Honda’s working on an HUD system, but is proposing several different ways of mounting it on the bike. Honda proposes mounting the projector to the bike’s gas tank, or above the triple trees, and beaming a signal into the back of the windshield, or even mounting it around the windshield area and beaming the text to the top of the gas tank.

Would any of this offer any advantage at all over current TFT, LCD or analogue gauges? It’s not likely; the big benefit of helmet-mounted HUD is that it allows riders to focus on the road more easily. But, if it actually comes to market (unlikely), we’ll know for sure.

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