A touchscreen that “knows” what you are about to tap as you hover near the screen has been developed by Jaguar Land Rover with the University of Cambridge.
With the new technology, there’s no need to formally tap on the screen, a simple approach may be good enough. The patented technology uses sensors for eye-tracking and gesture control to predict what you are about to touch on the screen so the screen can register your command without the actual touch.
This “reduces driver-screen interaction by 50 percent,” requiring less eyes off the road time for the driver. It also makes the radios easier to operate on bumpy roads. The technology might also find a broad range of uses at this time of COVID-19, reducing the need to touch screens.
As the system is software based, it can be added to an infotainment system that already has in-car gesture and eye tracking sensors installed, said Car and Driver.
The more you use the device, the quicker and more accurate it gets, said Robb Report.
“The technology uses artificial intelligence to determine the item the user intends to select on the screen early in the pointing task, speeding up the interaction,” said a Jaguar Land Rover news release. “A gesture tracker uses vision-based or radio frequency-based sensors, which are increasingly common in consumer electronics, to combine contextual information such as user profile, interface design and environmental conditions with data available from other sensors, such as an eye-gaze tracker, to infer the user’s intent in real time.”
There’s no word on when it might be commercially available.
Source: Jaguar Land Rover via Car and Driver, Engadget
