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BMW is using the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona to demonstrate the next level in its in-car human-machine interface (HMI) control mechanisms, with the new technology known as Natural Interaction.
The German car manufacturer is calling this the 'most advanced voice command technology' available, with expanded gesture control and gaze recognition said to enable genuine multimodal operation for the first time.
Set to make its debut in 2021 in the BMW iNext, Natural Interaction uses advanced speech recognition, optimised sensor technology and context-sensitive analysis of gestures to recognise colloquial forms of vocabulary and even finger-pointing to know what its driver wants it to do.
Spoken instructions are processed by Natural Language Understanding. This features an intelligent learning algorithm to interpret spoken requests, which can be as free-flowing as saying 'What's this building?', 'How long is that business open?', 'What is this restaurant called?' or 'Can I park here and how much will it cost?'
Natural Interaction even recognises the right situations in which to operate, so - for instance - it will not respond to voice control if the driver is having a conversation with other passengers, instead switching to gesture and gaze controls instead. So windows can be opened, or air vents adjusted, or the driver can even point to various function buttons on the car and ask what they do.
The 'pointing' bit is particularly clever, because - with current BMW Gesture Control - you have to perform one of six predetermined hand movements in a field beneath the interior mirror to make various things happen; and this isn't always a 100 per cent successful process. Now, though, BMW says that Natural Interaction's enhanced sensors, operating on infrared, can capture hand and finger movements in three dimensions throughout the driver's entire operating environment. And it's said to be much more accurate, too, so you can point at the Control Display and say a command, and the car will initiate the desired operation without need to touch the screen.
Anything else?
"Customers should be able to communicate with their intelligent connected vehicle in a totally natural way," said Christoph Grote, senior vice-president for BMW Group Electronics. "People shouldn't have to think about which operating strategy to use to get what they want. They should always be able to decide freely - and the car should still understand them. BMW Natural Interaction is also an important step for the future of autonomous vehicles, when interior concepts will no longer be geared solely towards the driver's position and occupants will have more freedom."