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Next Gen iDrive with Gesture Control and Touchscreen Unveiled at 2015 CES

BMW’s iDrive system has come a long way as far as infotainments go. Initially deemed as horrifying and hard to use, the company managed to turn things around and are now offering one of the best choices on the market.
Gesture Control 27 photos
Photo: bmw
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However, things are about to reach a new height once the new G11 7 Series comes out. The flagship model should be the one to introduce the new tech on the market as our spyshots seem to suggest. The prototypes driven around Munich are showcasing bigger screens that seem to have touchscreen capabilities.

BMW basically confirmed all of this when they took the veil off a new system at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. Dubbed Control Display, their new iDrive screen features the touchscreen tech everyone’s been waiting for. That’s not all though.

Sure, it’s going to be nice to touch the center screen to get it to do what you want but considering the size of current BMW’s, reaching it might be an issue. Therefore, the engineers created yet another innovation: non-contact gesture recognition.

Basically, this means that you can simply make various gestures in front of the screen with your hand and the system will read them and perform various actions. Think of it like the technology you have on the Xbox Kinect or the Playstation Move devices.

The gesture has to be performed in between the area limited by the gear lever, steering wheel and Control Display (or iDrive display) because it is recognized by a 3D sensor mounted in the roof.

This sensor can figure out if one or two fingers are being pointed or whether the thumb and index finger are being moved towards each other. Reading these gestures then dictates the action to be undertaken by the system.

A rotating movement can be used, say, to alter the volume of the radio, a finger raised to accept a phone call or a swiping movement to decline a call.

Touch Command

How about rear seat occupants, then? How will they access the infotainment system? On some cars that isn’t an issue but in ones that are created to be better experienced from the back seat, that might be a problem. Yes, I’m talking about the 7 Series.

BMW found a solution to those problems as well, introducing what they call the Touch Command. The system is rather simple. Using a tablet connected through Wi-Fi to the car’s infotainment system, any passenger can use it to change comfort functions.

The tablet is kept in a crash-proof holder and can be recharged by means of a snap-in adapter. The touchscreen itself is therefore transformed into a high-tech-looking element of the vehicle interior. A BMW app on the tablet makes it possible to control all available devices, such as the Rear-Seat Entertainment System. When it is being used, the tablet can be either left secured in its holder or removed. All functions are permanently available thanks to the Wi-Fi connection.

Of course, the range of possibilities is even greater thanks to these tablets. Basically you can do anything you want with it, without disturbing the driver. For example, you can access media content and play videos on it, without changing what is displayed for the person behind the wheel, say the navigation for example.

Most of this technology will be included in the new 7 Series and, no matter how disappointed you might be in how it looks, it’s a huge step up in technology.
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