What's the news?
More and more, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is turning into America's most important motor show, and Kia is joining the flock of car makers headed for the show floor.
At the 2019 CES, which will be held in January, Kia isn't going to preview a new model, or talk about tech you can buy next year. Oh no, the Koreans are going to be looking far deeper into the future than that. And even deeper into your soul...
Well, into your mood at any rate. Kia's 'Space of Emotive Driving' exhibit will peer into a future where autonomous, robotic driving has become entirely normal, and looks to see what needs to be done to create a better in-vehicle environment for us humans. The answer, it seems, is mood-reading technology.
Kia's new Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving (R.E.A.D.) system has been developed in conjunction with the boffins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab's Affective Computing group. The system can monitor your mood and how you're feeling using cutting edge artificial intelligence-based bio-signal recognition technology. Then it can alter the cabin to help cheer your up or calm you down. Kia isn't saying exactly how it does this, yet, but we're guessing it's a combination of music, entertainment, visual displays, cabin temperature and humidity, seat massage, and probably some perfume sprays. But hey, this is the future we're talking about, so maybe it can even make you a chocolate cake if you're feeling down. Everyone cheers up when they get cake, right? Kia says that: "The technology monitors a driver's emotional state and tailors the interior environment according to its assessment - potentially altering conditions relating to the human senses within the cabin, creating a more joyful mobility experience." Joyful certainly means cake to us.
Mr. Albert Biermann, President and Head of Research & Development Division of Kia Motors, said: "We have developed R.E.A.D. System to create an interactive future mobility in-cabin space by converging cutting edge vehicle control technology and AI-based emotional intelligence. Consequently, R.E.A.D. will enable continuous communication between drivers and vehicles through the unspoken language of 'emotional feeling', thereby providing an optimised human senses-oriented space for drivers in real-time."
Anything else?
We'll find out more when the CES opens its doors on the 8th of January. Don't expect to see this tech in a Kia Ceed anytime soon, though.