Cambridge and Jaguar Land Rover Are Developing Touchless Touchscreens
Jaguar Land Rover and the University of Cambridge are working on new touchscreen technology that eliminates the need to touch the screen whilst you're driving.
The new technology is called ‘Predictive Touch’ for now, in part because the system is able to predict what you might be aiming for on the screen.
All you’ll have to do is simply reach out with your finger pointing toward the item on screen that you want to select; it’ll then highlight the item and then select it.
According to the University of Cambridge: ‘The technology uses machine intelligence to determine the item the user intends to select on the screen early in the pointing task, speeding up the interaction.
‘It uses a gesture tracker, including vision-based or radio frequency-based sensors, which are increasingly common in consumer electronics; contextual information such as user profile, interface design, environmental conditions; and data available from other sensors, such as an eye-gaze tracker, to infer the user’s intent in real time.’
Cambridge claims that lab tests showed a 50 percent reduction in both effort and time by the driver in using the screen, which would theoretically translate to more time looking at the road and less time jabbing away at the screen.
If the prediction and machine learning technology is good enough, we could see this resulting in a reduced number of accidental inputs.
University of Cambridge have commented on existing technology that seems similar, used by other automotive competitors:
‘Our technology has numerous advantages over more basic mid-air interaction techniques or conventional gesture recognition, because it supports intuitive interactions with legacy interface designs and doesn’t require any learning on the part of the user,’ said Dr Bashar Ahmad of the University of Cambridge.
Additionally, the technology that is being developed could be used for more than just vehicle touchscreen control.
Cambridge says it could be integrated into ATMs, airport check-in kiosks, grocery store self-checkouts and more. In a world where we’re all paranoid about touching things, touchless interactions sound increasingly ideal.
According to the University of Cambridge’s press release, the software has reached ‘high technology readiness levels’, meaning we could see it in upcoming model refreshes soon.
It may not be long before we see this innovative technology hitting the market.
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