Touchscreens have proliferated in modern vehicles, offering a great deal of functionality while gathering fingerprints like so much kudzu on a Kansas cabin. Engineers at Jaguar Land Rover have teamed with the boffins at Cambridge University to develop what seems like a contradiction in terms: a touchless touchscreen.

Touted as a way to cut driver distraction and, in these pandemic times, reduce the spread of bacteria, the patented technology is officially called ‘predictive touch’ by its development team. The tech uses artificial intelligence to determine the item the user intends to select on the screen early in the pointing task, speeding up the interaction.

A gesture-tracker uses vision-based or radio frequency-based sensors to combine contextual information – such as user profile, interface design and environmental conditions – with data available from an eye-gaze tracker to infer the user’s intent. In essence, all these sensors will pick up the movement of your arm and attempt to predict the command you’re about to hammer into the touchscreen.

Read Full Story At driving.ca >>