My Road Safety

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show showed more evidence of the inevitable convergence of the digital life and driving. Regardless of whether you see this as a benefit or the coming of the robot apocalypse, nearly every automaker has a plan to make our vehicles as connected as our smartphones. Mercedes-Benz’s vision is shown in the Dynamic & Intuitive Control Experience (DICE) concept that was shown on the German company’s CES stand. DICE in this demo situation is actually housed in a cube, with a car interior designed in the style of a gleaming-white Kubrickian future.

There are two main components to the system: the front screen and the control scheme. In the demonstration, all kinds of information is shown on the windshield, from incoming phone calls to navigation directions. A second screen that spans the dashboard provides instrumentation and more detailed infotainment information. The demonstration car had us “driving” along the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Pass by a restaurant, shop, or even the Oakland Bay Bridge, and the screen puts a small circle over the point of interest to denote that more information is available.

This is where the control scheme comes in, as DICE is completely gesture-based. Interaction with the information requires you to first motion in the general area of what you want to highlight. To select, you make a pushing motion, like with a button. When more information is displayed, you can either swipe to the right to save the information for later, or dismiss it. Saved information moves down into the dash screen, which is also controlled with gestures and allows you to play music, make phone calls, or bring up navigation destinations.

But it turns out the future is either a long way off or will be incredibly frustrating. The demonstration cockpit works in theory, and the Mercedes-Benz engineer giving the walk-though was able to use the system with ease. I found things to be slightly more difficult, as even selecting and activating items on the windshield proved difficult. The system uses cameras to track the motion and the button-press motion requires you to close your fingers down to a point—a simple forward motion with the hands is not recognized as a press. In the dashboard display, selecting the central functions (such as navigation, audio, and phone) proved frustrating. And I was pretty much hopeless when attempting to scroll through the driver information functions to the left of the steering wheel.

Of course DICE is purely a concept, but it does bring up a number of issues with gesture-based controls, primarily that they require very accurate motion recognition. The demonstration cube also constantly tracks the occupants, so it doesn’t know if you’re merely gesturing during conversation or need to find directions to the nearest hospital. That said, the idea of augmented reality projected onto the windshield and fully integrated into the car is remarkable. Our only hope is that the driving experience of the future will be as compelling.