Jaguar Land Rover will integrate a toucheless touchscreen

Jaguar Land Rover and the University of Cambridge have developed a touchless touchscreen.

Patented technology offers dual benefit of keeping drivers’ eyes on the road and reducing spread of bacteria and viruses in post COVID-19 world. Experts say we should expect to see it in production soon. This “mind reading” touchless touchscreen is based on the so-called  predictive touch. The system can predict what the driver might be aiming for on the screen.  This new predictive touch technology uses sensors to predict the intended target on the screen, so one doesn’t have to touch the screen. According to the press release of the University of Cambridge, “the technology uses machine intelligence to determine the item the user intends to select on the screen early in the pointing task, speeding up the interaction. It uses a gesture tracker, including vision-based or radio frequency-based sensors, which are increasingly common in consumer electronics.”

It can reduce auto crashes

Lab tests show that there is a 50 per cent reduction in both effort and time spent by the driver in using the screen. That means that the driver would have more time to look at the road, therefore the time jabbing away at the screen is shorter. This could reduce the possibility of road accidents.  Experts say it won’t be long before Jaguar Land Rover will integrate it into cars and the new models that will hit the market could have this technology.

This technology goes beyond car industry

Cambridge researchers say that the touchless touchscreen, as soon as it is ready and out of the lab, can be used widely in many areas, such as ATMs, airport check-in kiosks, grocery store self checkouts and more. Against the background of the corona virus pandemic, people are more and more obsessed with contactless operations, so this idea of a touchless touchscreen will be a success.