Mercedes S-Class Co-operative makes friends with pedestrians

Mercedes reveals the S-Class Co-operative, an autonomous S-Class with technology aimed at communicating with, and reassuring, pedestrians.

As new technology in cars becomes more common it raises new issues for pedestrians, and makes car makers think long and hard about what they need to do to keep things safe.

We’re about to see one of the electric car’s USPs – silent driving – relegated to the history books with mandatory noises coming in to play in 2019 to ensure sight-impaired pedestrians know they’re around. But car makers aren’t just having to make EVs noisier, they’re also worried about how pedestrians will react to cars without a driver at the wheel as the prospect of driverless autonomous cars looms on the horizon.

Jaguar Land Rover has already revealed it’s looking at ‘eyes’ on the front of autonomous cars to reach out to pedestrians and assure them they’ve been seen, and Mercedes are heading down a similar route.

The Mercedes S-Class Co-operative is a test-bed for what Mercedes thinks needs to be done, featuring an array of visual and audio cues to interact with pedestrians so they have a clear idea of what the car is doing.

Turquoise light strips on the windscreen, grille, headlamps and mirrors – and lower are of the windows – indicate the car is in autonomous mode, lamps on the roof indicate the car’s next actions and follow the movements of pedestrians to acknowledge their presence – effectively ‘eye contact’.

The car also ‘comes to life’ from a standstill with a light signal followed by the raising of the back end followed by the front, as if it’s waking up.

Alexander Mankowsky, a futurologist at Daimler, said:

People need to be able to quickly and reliably gauge what an autonomous vehicle is going to do next. The vehicle must therefore provide information about its intentions in a way that people can grasp immediately and intuitively.

Oh, how things are changing.