BMW’s Wrist Gadget For Replacing Touchscreens Is Pure Sci-Fi

It’s a well-researched fact that touchscreens, especially when they dominate the cabin, tend to be distracting and can cause accidents. To that end, automakers are working on several alternative ideas, one of which CarBuzz has just unearthed via the World Intellectual Property Office. Documentation filed there by BMW describes a new sort of user interface that is straight out of a futuristic film, where any surface of the car interior can be used as a touchpoint to interact with the car and operate its various functions. In a nutshell, the idea is that the BMW iX driver of the future would wear a device on the wrist, and this device would control various car functions wirelessly.

Electro-Myographic Control

The patent describes the device as having an electro-myographic sensor. Myography refers to the study of the velocity and intensity of muscular contraction, so this device is a controller operated by muscle movement. This device would need a sufficiently flat surface to read the pressure signals, so it could be worn on the right arm while the user rests their elbow on the center armrest and steers with their left hand, or the device could be pressed against the user’s leg, or the door panel, or possibly even the ceiling of the cabin. As long as the muscles can tense up and release in a repeatable fashion, the surface doesn’t matter.

One example of a potential benefit listed is when one has to suddenly honk the horn, and steer away from a crash at the same time, but only one hand is on the wheel, such as when one arm is resting on the window frame, or when the driver is adjusting a climate control setting. To make operation as fluid as possible, the patent suggests training an artificial neural network to recognize certain gestures as they would naturally be performed, creating settings based on those. For example, since you move your index finger in opposite directions to indicate left versus right, the system could learn to tell the difference.

The Potential Benefits

BMW notes that learning a new interface and system is not easy, and it acknowledges that as cars get more and more complicated, the learning curve gets steeper. Thus, a system like this could eventually become so fine-tuned that adjusting the climate control, changing the audio, indicating a lane change, or opening a sunroof becomes like second nature. In essence, this is gesture control on steroids, but we foresee other potential benefits, such as for passengers who could interact with games and other media in far more engrossing and engaging ways than ever before.

We’re all for ideas that could enhance safety, but to do so, they need to be executed to perfection, and the learning process needs to feel natural and easy. If that day comes, we’ll be driving Bimmers with a completely different user interface than we’re currently accustomed to, and given how expansive the iDrive system and head-up display in Neue Klasse vehicles will be, it seems we’re on that path already. For users, this idea provides a whole new experience that may improve safety, and for BMW, well, such a system would allow it to save fortunes on switchgear like knobs, stalks, buttons, and toggles.

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