The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event currently happening in Las Vegas, US, is attended by a decent number of automakers from around the world. One of these automakers is BMW, a luxury automaker from the land of Germany. The company in question has been introducing quite a few exciting technologies ever since the opening of the event. Now, it is proudly introducing the new TouchCommand and iDrive features.
Speaking of the new iDrive feature, the prototype that the German company is showing off at the 2015 CES comes with a touchscreen display. It will work side by side with an onboard iDrive controller and will even feature a virtual keyboard as well, making input particularly easy for owners of future BMW vehicles.
It turns out that the touchscreen display will also be equipped with an ability to receive gesture input. For this particular kind of input methods, the company makes use of a 3D sensor mounted on the interior roof of the vehicle. The sensor will attempt to detect the hand gestures that owner of the vehicle makes somewhere among the Control Display, steering wheel and the transmission shift lever.
According to BMW, it designs the system to decode a host of different movements. These movements include a swiping move, finger rotation, finger tapping and many more. The company unveils that owners of the vehicle can use a rotating move to do things like slowing down the radio volume or accepting or declining a phone call.
As for the TouchCommand feature, it is a feature that the company will make available for the rear seat passengers. Basically, this feature uses a tablet from the South Korean company, Samsung, to run an app specially developed for BMW. The TouchCommand feature will enable the passengers sitting in the rear seats to take control of the vehicle as well, such as, to adjust the vehicle infotainment system or even to alter the climate settings of the vehicle. BMW also tries to protect these Samsung tablets by means of crash resistant holders, and, whenever the tablets are about to run out of juice, they can always be recharged using a snap-in adapter.
If reports are to be believed, the luxury German automaker will start offering both the new iDrive and TouchCommand features on the 2016 BMW 7-Series.
