Self Driving Cars with Facial Recognition and VR are coming

February 07, 2019, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas last month was featuring some incredible technological advances on many fronts. The ones concerning cars are nothing short of fantastical in some cases.

We’ve grown accustomed to the idea of self driving cars, although we certainly aren’t comfortable or ready for them on a societal or infrastructure level, but what about cars that you put VR head gear on and are taken to a virtual theme park while the car drives? That’s just one tech feature that was featured.

Audi is working with Disney on in car entertainment. The VR headsets will take you to Disney theme parks with rides in syn with the car’s movement. Disney calls this Holoride and was using a ride called “Rocket’s Rescue Run” based on the “Avengers”. Until Audi has fully autonomous cars on the road in 2021 (the company’s goal) the headsets will only be for use in passenger seats. The games themselves will be tailored to the length of your car ride.

Hyundai was showing off their ‘virtual touch’ gesture based system that would allow navigation by drivers and passengers via pointing or waving at the interactive screen on the windshield. What could go wrong in a car with parents and kids? The car would switch to autonomous mode from manual. You can then scroll tough a movie menu etc.  to select onboard entertainment. They are also using facial recognition tech to ‘read’ the driver’s mood and change the interior lighting based on the mood. It’s meant to alert others to distracted drivers. Hyundai hopes to roll this tech out by 2025.

Mercedes-Benz highlighted its Urbanetic car made for transporting larger numbers of people (12) or cargo around town.

Tesla featured it’s Byton which would allow entire autonomous trips by 2021.

The BMW Vision iNEXT meanwhile is a  luxury car described as a "living room on wheels,". It features carpets and wood tables. It has touch controls and a voice powered personal assistant which BMW says will "seamlessly interlinked with BMW Connected, smart devices and the smart home network, enabling drivers to make purchases or close the windows of their house, for example, by voice command from their vehicle." They expect this car to be on the market in 2021.

There is a lot of tech coming down the pipe. The question remains whether people, insurers, and the government are ready for it.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

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