A Smarter Jag
Jaguar Introduces Shoulder Tap
As CES 2015 showed, self-driving technology shows big promise: fewer traffic jams and better safety on our roads. While fully autonomous driving is coming in a near future, sharing the road can already be a safer experience for new Jaguar Land Rover’s drivers today.
Jaguar Land Rover has unveiled “Bike Sense”, a research system that could tap the driver on the shoulder and ring a bicycle bell inside the car to help prevent accidents involving bicycles, motorbikes or even pedestrians. Developed at Jaguar Land Rover’s Advanced Research Centre in the UK, “Bike Sense” leverages a range of new technologies that use colors, sounds and touch inside the car to trigger an instinctive response from the driver to prevent accidents. The goal of Bike Sense is to create a new interface that communicates the nature and seriousness of risks outside the vehicle.
Bike Sense takes us beyond the current technologies of hazard indicators and icons in wing mirrors, to optimizing the location of light, sound and touch to enhance this intuition” — Dr. Wolfgang Epple, Jaguar Land Rover research and technology director.
To help the driver understand where the bike is in relation to their car, the audio system will make it sound as if a bicycle bell is coming through the speaker nearest the bike, so the driver immediately understands the direction the cyclist is coming from.
If a bicycle or motorbike is coming up the road behind the car, Bike Sense will detect if it is overtaking or coming past the vehicle on the inside, and a haptic device in the top corners of the driver’s seat will “tap” the driver on the left or right shoulder. Additionally, the car will prevent you from accelerating into cyclists you can’t see at crossings by vibrating the accelerator when its front sensors detect a bike.
And finally, Bike Sense will help prevent vehicle doors being opened into the path of bikes when the vehicle is parked, warning occupants of approaching hazards by vibrating the door handle and sounding a warning buzz.
Source: Mighty Things
Sebastien Chalmeton is the founder and CEO of Mighty Things, a global strategy and innovation company designed for the connected world. We solve business problems at the intersection of digital innovation, mobility, wearable tech and the Internet of Things.
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