WHAT sort of car will you be selling in the future?
Will there be a steering wheel for customers to grab hold of when they sit in the driver’s seat? Or will they be staring at a plastic dashboard?
Possibly all of these.
One thing’s for sure, to make things happen, hand gestures are sure to play a key part, especially as we move further towards autonomous cars.
Hand gestures are already present with some OEMs. On a BMW, for example, you can reduce or increase the volume of the media system with a finger gesture.
More than this, 3D touch displays will become the new standard in the car cockpit as performance and design are no longer the only decisive criteria for purchasing a car that they once were.
Consumers increasingly demand ever more powerful infotainment and operating systems, with access to a wide spectrum of digital information.
As such user-friendliness will be a key issue. After all, you won’t want to be having a degree in digital connectivity just to make a central function of the car work to explain its functionality to a customer; and neither will the customer thank you either.
As such, even familiar control elements in the cockpit will give way to innovative technologies that make driving safer, more comfortable and cleaner. And it’s to do with the communication between car and driver.
The ease of use of these technologies is fundamental to the acceptance of future autonomous cars. A glimpse into the future reveals what the modern cockpit will look like: amazingly plastic, three-dimensional instruments in crystal-clear graphics that can be controlled by touch or gesture.
Haptic feedback will allow the driver to distinguish between different virtual buttons without needing to look at the screen.
The haptic feedback will take the form of a very precise, short, mechanical impulse that is transmitted to the display surface.
And as for explaining why there is no steering wheel or pedals in the autonomous car of the future … well, we’ll leave that one to you!
If you want to find out more about what’s happening with the future car, then check out the 5th International VDI Conference. “Automotive HMI & Connectivity” presents innovative HMI features for the automotive sector in Frankfurt, Germany, on September 26 – 27 2018.
Registration and programme at www.vdi-international.com/hmi.
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