Vision of Self-Driving Cars

BMW's i Inside future concept car may be years away from being a reality. However the HoloActive Touch system this luxury car maker recently debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is already functional. The effects are fascinating. Imagine a full-color image projected into thin air (R2D2-style) that is above the center console aimed directly toward the driver.

Above the screen, floating buttons control a door-to-door dashboard display. This touch system is equipped with a type of haptic feedback, developed so its users can feel the hologram, as they touch it.

How does it work? With an array of 300 ultrasonic speakers in a panel beneath the hologram. An infrared camera detects the position of the driver’s finger, as it presses the air. Then a jet of sound is shot at the fingertip to acknowledge the input. The sensation is surreal, comparable to a static pulse. While the tone is inaudible, it is picked up as demonstrated in the video at Wheels.
 

Confirmation of the input is received from a vibration in the seatback, and an audio response through headrest-mounted speakers. Most of this functionality is smartphone linked for receiving calls or playing music and video. In the future, BMW says it could project anything from a volume control with haptic feedback, for each click of the dial, to paddle shifters and even the steering wheel itself.

HoloActive Touch is an evolution of the relatively primitive gesture control system, which is currently available in the BMW 7 Series. BMW firmly believes gesture-based systems are the way of the future. “Being in your direct reach, we think it is such a natural way of interacting with the car,” according to Sonja Rumelin, technical expert at HoloActive Touch, adding “now you are touching something, so it is a mixture of the gestures you normally do and the gestures which have become intuitive from using touchscreens."

While there are many advantages, “the main advantage of HoloActive Touch in comparison to a touchscreen is that it can disappear. If you turn off a screen in that position there is still a black surface, which works against the living room experience we want to have with this,” Rumelin remarked. Living room experience refers to the concept’s open design, with a minimal console and a dashboard mounted much further away than is typical. The way that the holographic image is created is by using micro mirrors and glass prisms in order to reflect an LCD display, which is mounted behind a panel in the low center console, similar to a regular heads-up display.

Learning how to use HoloActive Touch is like “learning a new language. Once you have it and you start using it, it’s seamless. Then you get into another car and you start waving your hand and realize it doesn’t have it,” according to BMW North America spokesman, Hector Arellano-Belloc, who spoke with Wheels Magazine and estimated that “[HoloActive Touch] is something that might come into production within the next generation or two – 10 to 15 years.” He added “when we introduced iDrive 15 years ago on the 7 Series we were criticized. But then the rest of the manufacturers followed suit.” They were criticized at first but eventually they were imitated.
 

Other features in the BMW i Inside Future concept include a function called Sound Curtain: Using speakers in the headrests, an isolated area of sound is created around the passengers, so each can listen to their own audio without disturbing other passengers.

Some new materials have been used around the car inside and out for their ‘functional properties’, including a garden bed of moss under the rear seat for its climate benefits and a cork floor to help with the acoustics.

BMW remodeled showroom floors

in Germany with Wicanders Cork.

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