July 26, 2004
A car with feelings
Automobiles have a strange relationship to human emotion. Much like the Internet, a car gives its driver a sense of pseudoanomity and isolation, coupled with a sudden sense of enhanced abilities. That produces the same sort of id-release and overblown emotions that one typically sees in discussion boards and email. I'd argue that dense traffic behaves kind of like a flame war.
Yet while cars stir the emotions, they don't allow us many ways to communicate them. This is particularly weird when you consider that highways are insanely dangerous places that could really benefit from greater communication between each hurtling 2-ton vehicle. But cars only give us very few ways of explaining our intent or feelings to other drivers. We can blast the horn (annoying), use the body English of the car itself (incredibly dangerous), flick our turn signals (accurate but useless for communicating anything other than "I'm turning"), or wave frantically to other drivers (simply cryptic).
This is why I was intrigued to open the New York Times today and find a story about some Toyota designers who have patented a system that would give a car "expressions" like a human. The system would instal lighting on the hood, as well as "eyebrow" accents over the headlights; it would also control the antenna and window wipers to communicate emotion. The result, as the Times reports, is an interesting array of ways to "talk" to other drivers or pedestrians:
For anger, the hood lighting color glows red while the eyebrow lights up and the headlights, antenna and height are in standard position.
But if the driver is joyful, the car may "wink" to let another car go first by changing the hood lighting and the eyebrow to orange, shading the headlight so it appears half-closed and causing the antenna to vibrate from left to right as if it were wagging.
The chart also indicates that a car with mechanical trouble might "cry" by displaying dark blue hood lighting, a shaded headlight, a lit eyebrow and a blinking "tear" light.
And if the "sudden appearance of a vehicle or pedestrian causes sudden braking," the car will express surprise by having its hood lights turn orange, its eyebrows light up red, the headlights shaded and the vehicle height lowered in the rear.
The question is whether these "emotions" would be too cacophonous. Could we really figure out what the cars were saying to us?
Similarly, I once had an idea for a simpler, stripped-down improvement upon brake lights. The problem with brake lights is that they don't communicate very well how hard or how suddenly the driver is applying the brakes. Sure, you can visually see whether the car ahead of you is rapidly slowing down -- except in low visibility, when it's often hard to judge the speed of a vehicle ahead of you. Some brake lights go on more "intensely" when they're applied hard, but intensity can also be tricky to judge from a distance. So why not re-engineer brake lights to give a bit more information? Put a set of three brake lights on each side of the car, and have them light up in combinations that indicate how rapidly the driver is braking: One light when the brakes are being applied gently, two lights when they're being applied more firmly, and all three when the driver is really slamming them hard.
Posted by Clive Thompson at July 26, 2004 02:10 PM
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Driving around in LA, I am constantly amazed that additonal information is almost always required to navigate the streets unscathed. The most basic of these is the handsignals that have become almost universally required to either negotiate a 4-way stop or "thank" someone for letting you in on the freeway.[I sometimes reflect on the Disney Freeway shorts and wonder what happened to the world where changing lanes and merging on the freeway was a snap] And I am further amazed that basically no changes have been made in this area. The Toyota designers seem to be taking things a bit far-- I'm not sure that so many bells-and-whistles are required. But it seems like this should be a solvable problem, and wouldn't more information about what other drivers are doing (and feeling) make the roads safer?
Yes, I've heard that L.A. driving can be totally insane! And yes, the Toyota design does seem to be a little overdone. But the concept of making cars more expressive is pretty cool.
I've noticed that some cars do have two tail light / brake light modes: The usual solid red for stopping, but if you hit the brakes hard, there is an additional flashing red light that comes on.
Not sure which make/models, but it is a relatively new feature.
More expressive brake lights would be great. I once got in an accident because I was following a group of drivers who were constantly tapping their brakes, causing a crying-wolf effect. Then someone made a panic stop and it took me too long to figure out this one was for real.
The other part of the car that needs more differentiation is the horn. You need more than one tone - at the minimum, one obnoxious, loud "you are about to hit my car" kind of noise, and one polite "do you mind if I switch lanes?" kind of sound.
Yes! At very least, different volumes for when you're honking to alert someone who's in another car -- and who thus needs lots of volume -- and someone who's walking in front of you, in which case you want a quieter honk. A horn calibrated only to be heard inside another loud, moving car is waaaaay too loud for nearby pedestrians.
I've always hated the fact that a "happy honk" sounds the same as a "pissed off" honk. Meaning, that if I'm honking at a friend on the side of the road it's the same sound when someone cuts me off.
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Yes, I've heard that L.A. driving can be totally insane! And yes, the Toyota design does seem to be a little overdone. But the concept of making cars more expressive is pretty cool.
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I swear, the first time I read this I thought you said '...the concept of making cars more expensive...', which is also probably very true.
anyway, I think this would be cool. I always thought my first-generation Saturn Coupe should have been able to wink and stick its tongue out.
Matt, yeah, I'm with you on the "happy honk" problem.
Nichol -- ahahahah!
I could swear I read a Popular Science article awhile back that outlined a very similar tail light concept. If I remember correctly, it would be something like concentric circles of LEDs that progressively light up as you apply more pressure to the brakes. I believe it was Nissan that was working on it, but I can't remember for sure.
Haha I've always wondered about doing something like this .. having ways to communicate things to other drivers .. but I never would have thought of actions that mimic actual facial expressions.
That is amazing.
I can't wait to get a car and press the Angry button.
Being in a car, at least in relation to other people on the road, is a pretty pathetic state. The experience, at times, can be likened to live burial: you can scream all you want, but no one will hear you. Considering how lethal cars are (42,000 dead in the US alone every year), maybe it's a good thing that their very nature makes communication with drivers in other vehicles next to impossible. What would you actually say to every person who ever cut you off? If you could say it, what would they say back, and where would it lead? The Emotocar should be successful in making people realize how limited their ability to communicate to other people is when they're driving.
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