Changing perceptions: the control and display technologies shaping the car of the future

From the rise of autonomy to the arrival of the mass-market electric car, the technology that drives and controls our vehicles is undergoing a period of profound change.

dWhile once they were little more than elegant chunks of mechanical engineering designed to get us from A to B, our cars are rapidly evolving into sensor-rich consumer devices: bristling with intelligence and connected to the world around them.

But as they become smarter and more sophisticated, what does this mean for the drivers and passengers? How will we communicate with our vehicles and make sense of the vast amounts of information they gather? And how will their intelligence be used to improve and enhance our experience rather than plunge us into a thick data-fog of distractions?

Addressing these challenges is one of the car industry’s most pressing and exciting areas of research. And a host of advanced control and display technologies – from gesture control systems that create the illusion of touch in mid-air to mind-reading steering wheels able to monitor a driver’s alertness – promise to fundamentally reshape our relationship with the car.