Not too long ago, when the instrument panel on a popular car consisted of just five or six instruments and five or six auxiliary (secondary) controls to operate the radio and heating system, the idea of making a hand gesture in a designated space to operate one of these controls would rightly have been seen as an unnecessary extravagance at best.

Today, driver workload is already heavy in modern cars, with an ever-increasing number of vehicles on the road. This is compounded by a constant stream of new auxiliary devices such as navigation systems, active safety systems, nomadic devices (personal digital assistants and mobile telephones, for example), advanced telematics systems and infotainment systems. The potential for distraction can clearly be seen in the comparison between the JaguarMkV Saloon of 1948-51 (Fig.1) and the 2007 model year JaguarXJ (Fig.2).

Consider that a driver is to perform a specific in-car task. In some cases a single sample of the in-car task is sufficient but, in other cases, more than one sample is required. Glance times typically range from 0.6s to 1.6s, with a mean glance time of about 1.2s. A car moving at 48km/h (30mph) will travel over 15m (50ft) in that time, so driver distraction is now one of the major causes of road accidents.

In 1999, The Commission of the European Communities recognised the potential dangers and issued a recommendation on safe and efficient in-vehicle information and communication systems.

In an attempt to reduce distractions, many car manufacturers have introduced menu-driven systems, controlled by touchscreens or central controllers. Voice recognition control systems have also been introduced.

Gesture recognition systems have the potential to offer substantial safety benefits, since commands can be made without taking the driver’s eyes off the road.

Several manufactures are now carrying out research to develop new gesture-operated interfaces using camera-based systems that utilise image recognition software. However, this research has identified several inherent difficulties associated with in-car camera-based gesture recognition systems, such as adapting to uncontrolled variations in lighting, maintaining accuracy with dynamic backgrounds, and real time operation. Nonetheless, the author believes that there is a reasonable probability that gesture recognition technologies will be in widespread use in numerous automotive HMI applications by 2020.

Engineers at Jaguar Technical Research have considered the potential advantages of gesture recognition systems but are well aware of the limitations of camera-based systems. So instead, the engineers are pursuing an alternative sensor-based approach that has less technical complexity yet can achieve the same safety benefits. Sensor-based gesture recognition technology largely builds on pioneering work undertaken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA. Low-frequency electric field sensors are safe, do not require line-of-sight, offer fast response times and high resolution, consume little power and are low cost. The intervention of a human hand entering the path between the transmit and receive electrodes cause a change in the displaced current measured at the receive electrode; this can be used to transmit control inputs to a HMI.

Carnegie Mellon University is developing the iWave gesture recognition system in collaboration with, and funded by, General Motors. The primary objective was to create an innovative human-car gesture interface to support information or entertainment goals without compromising safety. The initial interface was designed and tested in a driving simulator with 18 subjects using one-handed gestures in front of the centre console.

The Institute for Human Machine Communication at the Technical University of Munich has carried out a research study in collaboration with BMW to evaluate differences in driver distraction while controlling different input interfaces. In this study, haptic (touch) and gesture input modes are compared with regard to distraction from a controlling task similar to steering a car.

Meanwhile, Daimler Chrysler, together with Visteon, is also funding the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop a system, called the Gesture Panel, that allows a driver to control secondary devices using simple gestures.

The Daewoo Motor Company is collaborating with the University of Dundee to develop a non-contact pointing interface for control of non-safety-critical systems inside a vehicle with the aims of improving safety, decreasing manufacturing cost and improving the ease of driver migration between different cars.

Renault Research Department has also collaborated with the Université de Bretagne-Sud in Vannes, France, to evaluate the performance of subjects using a small gesture touchpad interface versus conventional rotary controls to execute given tasks.

Toyota’s Compact Sports and Speciality (CS and S) concept car made its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show 2003 featuring the company’s ‘Space Touch It’ concept. This is an integrated multimedia interface system operated by a series of holographic projections that the user ‘touches’. Spheres of information appear to float in space but, when touched, they allow the user to operate the vehicle’s secondary controls.

Carl Pickering is with Jaguar and Land Rover Technical Research, Coventry, UK.