If voice commands, touchscreen controls, a central dial, and steering
wheel buttons aren't enough, BMW will soon have a
new way to control the features of your infotainment system. With the release
of the 2016 7-Series in October, BMW will debut its new Gesture Control
feature.
Gesture Control doesn't let you control the whole
infotainment system. Instead it can recognize six preprogrammed gestures to
accomplish a few select tasks. The gestures need to be made above the iDrive
dial so a 3D sensor mounted above can recognize them.
Front seat occupants can turn up or down the volume by
twirling a finger clockwise for up and counter clockwise for down. That's two
gestures. The driver can take a call by pointing at the center screen or reject
the call by wiping his/her hand to the right in a dismissive style. That's two
more. The driver can also browse a 360-degree view of the vehicle on the center
screen by pinching his/her fingers together and moving right or left. That's
five.
An additional preprogrammed gesture, the two-finger point
(think of Curly trying to poke out Moe's eyes), can also be assigned to one of
seven tasks: Guidance to home address, Mute/Unmute, Last used menus, Next
title/station, Recent calls, Notifications, and Turn off/on control display.
We tried Gesture Control during the media drive of the 2016
7-Series and found that it works fairly well, but it's not bulletproof. The
gestures usually got the job done, but occasionally required another try to get
results. The volume up/down feature is also hard to modulate. How many finger
twirls are needed to get the desired volume? It's inexact and it will require
some practice to master.
For a video
tutorial on this system, click on the accompanying
video, in which Marcus Berendt, head of user experience at BMW, demonstrates
the system.
source: http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1099797_bmw-gesture-control-walkthrough-video
by Kirk Bell
http://www.boscheuropean.com
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