When is a car’s Touchscreen NOT a Touchscreen? Jaguar Land Rover has the answer.

Jaguar Land Rover has developed a ‘touchscreen’ for infotainment systems which managed to respond to pointing rather than touch.

Considering the current Clovid-19 climate, it’s no surprise that Jaguar Land Rover’s announcement of the development of a ‘contactless touchscreen’ (an oxymoron if ever we saw one) claims it’s great at fighting bacteria and viruses because you won’t need to touch the screen. 

But if these were normal times, the claim would be that having a touchscreen you don’t need to touch is much better for road safety; how many times, particularly in a car with a rather stiff ride, have you had to concentrate hard, with tongues sticking out, to jab exactly the right spot on a screen to get what you want, forgetting for a moment that you’re actually piloting a two-tonne killing machine?

With JLR’s new tech – developed with the help of Cambridge University – the screen uses AI for predictive touch function to work out what you’re aiming for, using vision-based and frequency-based sensors to deliver the right function without you having to do much more than point in its rough direction.

Lee Skrypchuk, JLR HMI Tech Specialist, said:

The technology also offers us the chance to make vehicles safer by reducing the cognitive load on drivers and increasing the amount of time they can spend focused on the road ahead. This is a key part of our Destination Zero journey.

How long it’s likely to be before you can get this tech in your new Jaguar or Land Rover JLR aren’t saying, but they do say the tech will work with existing touchscreens. So maybe not too long?