Touchless Interaction: BMW Unveils Air Touch Concept at CES

Much funds and resources, know-hows and solutions have been demonstrating at CES 2016, the annual hi-tech trade show that comes off in Las Vegas this month. Each and every automaker does his best to impress consumers with the software and design concepts reflecting its vision for the driving future. BMW makes no exception. 

At this year CES, the German giant showcases an iVision Future concept car that debuts with the Air Touch ultimate technology. This solution seems to be not the latest and newest look; actually, BMW made representation of such gesture-controlled interface system on the 2015 7 Series model.  This year CES expo BMW unveils the demo version of a touchless-concept vehicle based on the BMW i8 Spider model. As the BMW key speaker says, this revolutionary feature is aimed for the future autonomous self-driving concepts. However, production speaks louder than the speakers: according to the words of Klaus Fröhlich, the company would do its best to build-in the feature as soon as possible. We would have thought that it means the vehicle is hardly all-ready for the production.

BMW claims the Air Touch system was created to let the driver avoid extra movements while using the vehicle. It is hardly surprising in the view of numerous apps, control systems and different functions within the modern vehicles. In other words, 3D infotainment system will let you navigate the car via gesture control. The special button is incorporated into the steering wheel, so the driver can make the simple, not-complicated gestures to guide the menus confirming the right selections with the other hand. Special sensors would recognize the movement so the display can be navigated by touching the sensitive surface only. This feature is designed to help the driver focusing on the road movement seamlessly.