Your new car could soon be as thoughtful, powerful and communicative as KITT from the Knight Rider TV series. That’s the ultimate expression of the connected car, a trend which is intensifying rapidly. Over the next five years, car cockpits will be able to relay more information on bigger, multiple screens and through the windscreen, and you’ll be able to give commands far more intuitively thanks to voice recognition and gesture control software.
‘In a few years you’ll be talking to your car just like KITT,’ says Ralph Gilles, Chrysler’s design chief. ‘Your car will become like a friend, in a way.’ Even more incredibly, the car will be able to think deeply for itself, intuitively reacting to events and conditions.
Get connected
The ‘connected car’ will be able to safely interact with its driver, the surrounding infrastructure and other cars thanks to a constant connection to fast and powerful 4G networks.
Smartphones will be a critical component, hooking up with the car’s electronic architecture, and bringing in easily upgraded apps, computing power and infotainment. Relying on upgradeable phones will help prolong the life of the in-car unit and cut cost for the consumer.
Pioneering software company QNX demonstrated one in-car interface for new high-tech systems at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Plumbed into a Bentley GTC, the cabin is notable for its lack of switches. A 17-inch central screen can be configured to show a massive, detailed sat-nav map, or you can call up infotainment or change the air-con with voice commands. It even allows you to video conference.
The thinking car
QNX imagines a world where connected cars will be aware of traffic, weather conditions and potholes in the road ahead. By connecting with the Cloud, your car will know that your morning meeting’s been cancelled, and that today’s your wedding anniversary. It’ll also be able to determine if it’s appropriate to make a phone call or better to concentrate on the pedestrian it’s spotted lurking between parked cars.
Semi-autonomous driving capabilities are already under test, using GPS coordinates cross-checked with data about a location, plus car-mounted 360-degree cameras to identify human hazards, or a stop sign partially obstructed by tree branches.
A more free-thinking car will harness the potential of reconfigurable digital instrument clusters. First it will sense you’re driving hard down a B-road, and it will clear the instrument panel, so that only the speedo and tacho are prominently displayed. Head-up displays will also become more 3D-oriented, projecting images and turn arrows down the street, with the arrows changing size according to your proximity.
QNX is experimenting with Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology, which, using kit found in projection televisions, could beam information onto multiple surfaces around the car. So a passenger could surf smartphone web functions, by looking at the display projected onto a dash panel.
Say it, or wave it
The QNX prototype also showcased a breakthrough in internet-enabled voice recognition technology. The software uses an internet server to recognise language patterns, decode a command and react. It will enable drivers to speak a new destination or ask for specific cuisine, and the car will either voice the route or display a list of nearby Cantonese restaurants.
Car makers such as Ford are also trying to determine the best paradigm for gesture control. For example, you could send a venue address from smartphone to the driver’s nav screen simply via a flick of the wrist.
It’s all part of a bright, exciting future, which could boost in-car convenience and potentially reduce accidents. Assuming it all works.