Word has been out for some time that Google is looking to (somehow) engineer its own car, and has the ambition to have that car drive itself. The sensor-laden Toyota Prius test prototypes you may have seen are the precursors to that, and we now learn that being such a novel idea, the company won’t let you control it the way you do a regular car.

Engadget tells us that the internet giant has just filed a patent for a system that can read hand motion via a ceiling-mounted depth camera, as well as a laser scanner. The idea is you use gestures to control various features inside the car, without having to push buttons or even use your voice – the latter never really worked properly, so I’m glad for this proposed third way…

In fact, they have not stood still, and have already acquired hand gesture recognition app startup Flutter that will apparently be used to control Mac and PC functions – the connection to cars and this patent is not hard to make, though.

High-precision sensors nowadays have become really accurate, don’t cost that much to make, and even commercially available ones like the Kinect that comes with Microsoft’s new Xbox One gaming system are freakishly-accurate, as the video posted below eloquently shows.

We say this is one of the most promising directions for car interiors to go into in the future, as it allows the user to merely wave his or her hand in different ways and adjust the heating, close the window or turn up the radio. This is not far-fetched in any way, really, and we hope to see some interpretation of this in practice soon.

By Andrei Nedelea

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