The car of the future always bristles with fresh features borne of new ideas. But one reason why they’re called “concept cars” these days and not “dream cars” any more is that an increasing proportion of any given concept car’s futuristic features are really plausible. Consider autonomous vehicles, and the new use cases they bring: the industry recognizes the need to understand the exact, detailed condition of the driver for safe handoff of the driving task from the car to the driver. And another recognition quickly followed; it became obvious that monitoring the driver would bring benefits today, not just when AVs really begin to proliferate. Driver monitoring can already address issues such as drowsiness and loss of vigilance. This, in turn, paves the way for technology to manage the alertness of the driver, which in its own turn exerts pulls and provides missing links in a virtuous circle. That is exactly what’s happening today for in-cabin monitoring.
Our in-depth this week takes a look at cabin monitoring with radar, leveraging radar expertise growing in the industry because of more automated vehicles to understand their environment.
The Design Lounge looks at the Shanghai Auto Show from the design perspective. Interior news includes a summary of the Shanghai DVN Workshop lectures not presented in last week’s edition. All lectures remain available as VODs until May 15.
Sincerely yours,
