In a world in which drivers can manually drive themselves, before handing over control to their cars and then taking control again later in the journey, there are a number of different situations that can arise. Alex explains: “We wanted to use that journey and our prototyping platform to tell a story about how the combination of navigation with a very well done location-centric HMI (Human Machine Interface) can be merged with highly accurate, highly precise real-time content to make a better consumer experience.”

Switching back and forth between the car and driver (what is known as level three) is particularly complicated, and Alex says that Google doesn’t want to deal with that level of complexity. “We think we’re uniquely positioned in this space to have an insight into how these experiences can be brought to life,” says Alex, “and we can make this transition phase more acceptable for drivers and make them trust their cars, which in turn will help to drive adoption of these kind of technologies.”

HERE believes that in order for people to fully trust taking their hands off the wheel and being comfortable with it, it needs to be a stepped approach. Those initial steps will be brought to life through connected ADAS functions; the car will automatically change speed, for example, not only based on the car in front or the speed limit, but by variable message signs on the road itself that are changing by the minute. Or the car may refuse to change lanes because there’s a car in the driver’s blind spot.

Original Source: HERE

By Philip Barker