Low-profile, backlit, panel assembly for displaying images and/or data within a passenger compartment of a vehicle

A low-profile, backlit panel and control assembly for displaying images within a passenger compartment of a vehicle having a support structure, the assembly comprising:

• a substrate panel perforated with a two-dimensional array of closely-spaced microperforations which extend between front and back surfaces of the panel, the panel being configured to be attached to the support structure;
• a plurality of semiconductor-based, programmable lighting devices supported at the rear surface of the panel, each of the lighting devices including at least one lighting element, each of the lighting elements being individually addressable to control a luminous intensity and a color of light emitted by the lighting devices from the lighting elements, wherein each of the lighting devices is respectively aligned with a single microperforation of the two-dimensional array of microperforations so that the light emitted by the lighting devices travels through the microperforations to display two-dimensional images within the passenger compartment with the light emitted by each of the lighting devices traveling through its microperforation to the passenger compartment in the form of a pixel of one or more of the images;
• and
• a controller to individually control the lighting devices independently from one another such that a group of the lighting devices emit light to display one of the images at a given time according to a programmed activation scheme and a different group of the lighting devices emit light to display a different one of the images at another time according to the programmed activation scheme, and wherein the two-dimensional array of microperforations of the panel has an array configuration different than an array configuration of the pixels of any of the images, a resolution of each two-dimensional image of the images is based on size and shape of the lighting devices and of the microperforations, and the microperforations are sized, shaped, and spaced to conceal the lighting devices supported at the rear surface of the panel and to shield the support structure from view.