Always On - The cars of the future will give you a massage
Always On - The cars of the future will give you a massage
2012-10-16
this week on future check the future of
cars no yeah that's pretty awesome but I
think when you see what's coming from
safety to performance to entertainment
you'll still be pretty impressed
we hit the road to get a sneak peek at
how car makers envision the car of
tomorrow I'm here at Ford's Innovation
Lab where they're figuring out the best
way to adjust a seat and I mean three
different interfaces including voice
control to work on a seat that can even
give you a massage see you come and give
me a massage see you man
recline seat backwards okay move seat
back
co-come and move seat all the way down I
wanna be like and then I can cruise the
humble driver's seat is also getting
reinvented in other ways the next
frontier in driving is real-time driver
information this seat is actually
measuring my respiration the steering
wheel is measuring my heart rate whether
I'm at all sweaty the car can tell
whether I'm distracted and then actually
take steps to minimize those
distractions so far I seem to be doing
okay
my heart beats per minute is 60 19
breaths the seat belt can tell if I
start to breathe more heavily because
I'm stressed out as a driver even if I
don't think I'm stressed the car will
know
I can't wait to see what it does with my
road rage it has temperature sensors to
see if I get hot in the face maybe in
the future it could say like sweetie I
think you're getting a cold maybe we
should go home
engineers are also coming up with
innovative ways to make sitting in your
car more comfortable using geeky
data-driven design so what i'm doing
here is measuring seat ergonomics I have
these motion capture sensors on me and
I'm going to try to get into this very
small little back seat of a car then
Ford will use that data to make sort of
a digital human version of me that can
help in figuring out better design for
back seats so that I don't stick my
knees in the back of the driver every
time there I am Katie it's like a puppet
oh my gosh look at this it's like a
airplane seat
this is why I try to never sit in the
back seat abandon car
I look a lot more elegant as a digital
human than I probably did as a real
human probably the coolest thing about
the car of the future will be that it
can drive itself concepts are already in
existence Google has its self-driving
car and Stanford is racing an Audi TTS
on a track hands-free but what you might
not know is that incremental steps
toward autonomous driving are also
underway at Ford we talked to CTO Paul
masse Karina's about the march of
technology and the driving experience we
don't say that you know one day we're
going to wake up and there's going to be
an autonomous vehicle we don't we don't
see what we absolutely do see though is
increasing availability of more
connectivity in the vehicle increasing
availability of more automated driving
features for example using onboard
computers sensors and cameras the car is
able to alert me when there's another
car nearby
possibly preventing a collision GM is
also developing similar technologies
that will keep you in your lane if you
start to drift in this case the actual
seat alerts you with a little vibration
that actually that's really smart so
it's the slow drift triggers that as
opposed to something that feels kind of
intentional right you know people make
lane changes evasive maneuvers
and so we try and only give them the
warning when they really need it it's
kind of tricky event to try it out
Oh
but my favorite demo of the day was rear
automatic braking in my opinion this
safety tech is the closest thing to
autonomous driving because the car
actually takes control this is probably
the first time we've ever had the car
actually take control away from the
driver yeah doo doo doo - Doo no I'm
just kind of
oh my god and it's vibrating like crazy
look how close it was I was totally like
prepared to hit the pole I'm like
there's no way this is gonna stop oh
could we do that again yeah Wow even
when it's awesome that is remarkable
does it mostly work with stationary
objects like if that was actually a kid
it'll try to work with moving objects so
hmm now hooked and hooked might even be
an understatement
I mean whether it's having a car stop
itself to prevent a crash a seat that
measures your heart rate or a seat that
gives me a massage the car of the future
is definitely one that I want to ride in
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