The sheer amount of technology companies are willing to throw at your car's dashboard is amazing (well, maybe not your car -- after all, you're still driving a '76 Gremlin). Taking things up a notch, the folks at Fraunhofer have developed a dash that displays your location and the surrounding area in 3D, in real time. The system uses cameras to keep track of the location of your eyes, so the depth imaging effect can be achieved without using those funny glasses. In addition to the GPS, the dashboard only displays the information that is most relevant to the driver at any time -- fuel gauge, tire pressure, route information or the title of the song can be displayed, depending on user preferences. It's only a prototype at this point -- be sure to check it out when you hit CeBIT in Hanover this March.

[Via The Raw Feed]

It's hardly the only one working on making lithium-ion batteries a little less likely to blow up in your face, but the prolific folks at Fraunhofer Institute seem to think that they've come up with a solid contender for your future laptop or cellphone, and they're now set to take the wraps off it at the Hannover Messe conference later this month. The key to their solution, it seems, is the use of a non-flammable polymer electrolyte instead of the liquid electrolyte now commonly used in lithium-ion batteries. While that switch cuts down on the explosiveness, it also introduced a fair number of challenges, not the least of which is the fact that polymer becomes less conductive as it gets more solid. Fraunhofer's apparently made some significant progress on that front, however, and while they're still not completely satisfied with the conductivity, they say the batteries could be ready for commercial use in three to five years. They also, not surprisingly, see no end to the uses for 'em, saying that they could not only wind up in laptops and cellphones, but power tools, lawnmowers, and potentially even cars.

[Thanks, Mademoiselle Y]

Our favorite German researchers over at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed "entire electronic systems" capable of operating battery-free from body heat alone. The picture above shows a wireless transmitter powered by the human hand. The 200 millivolts required to drive the device is supplied by a thermoelectric generator (TEG) which extracts electrical energy from hot and a cold temperature differentials of just a few degrees Celsius. Of course, the application processor alone in modern handhelds requires about 1W to operate so 2mW is a long way off from powering our portable electronics. Still, progress is progress.

The research kids in Germany's Fraunhofer Institute just announced a tiny new video camera capable of shooting at a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and a variable frame rate up to 60 frames per second. The MicroHDTV is said to measure a scant 4 x 4 x 8-cm. So either that picture above is not to scale (a Euro is about the size of a US quarter) or they don't include the housing, lens, transmitter, etc. in their dimensions. We'll assume the former since it's said to be small enough to fit in a racing-car cockpit, helmet, or any other tiny space you'd like to broadcast HDTV from. It operates using "standard optical systems" and can be controlled via a web interface across the Internet. It'll be on display at CeBIT in march where we'll see what this baby can do.

You can't fault the folks at the Fraunhofer Institute for resting on their laurels after creating that obscure bit of technology known as the MP3. Having already announced an eye-controlled interaction system and a multimedia dome in the past two months, our fine German friends have now developed a technology that purports to automagically turn any old stereo content into sweet 5.1 surround sound. According to the Institute, SX Pro (which can apparently be implemented at either the software or hardware stage) works by analyzing an audio signal to identify characteristic sound elements, instantly redistributing those elements using an intelligent algorithm to create a natural sounding 5.1 mix. Fraunhofer even sees the technology being used at the professional level, with additional controls available to tweak the upmix process used by SX Pro -- offering a faster and cheaper alternative to producing a true 5.1 mix. How well it works, of course, is yet to be seen (er, heard), but the Fraunhofer Institute seems to be pretty confident in its work, noting that that the tech will be ready for use by the end of the year.

[Via Gizmag]

You've already seen the slew of projectors that we at Engadget are wont to write about regularly. But what you probably haven't seen is this euro cent-sized projector created by crafty German engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena. The 16mm (0.6 inches) wide projector works by shooting a laser at a single vibrating mirror, and although it works with red and blue lasers, the scientists say that green diode lasers aren't yet small enough, preventing the projector from hitting a full range of colors -- so hold off on thinking you're going to be watching "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" from a thumb-drive sized device in the near future. Dr. Peter Schreiber of the Fraunhofer Institute told the BBC that such a device could be eventually embedded into cellphones or PDAs. We'd love to be able to project a movie from our phone, but sadly Dr. Schreiber didn't tell the Beeb how big the projected image is, how much it will or currently costs, nor when it might be available -- not even a rough estimate, like 2014. Why must you be so coy with us, Fraunhofer Institute?

[Thanks, Ndric]