Volkswagon Golf R Touch Concept Premieres At CES

on January 6, 2015 at 11:23 am

Volkswagon’s R Touch interior tech concept has premiered at the CES show in Las Vegas, featuring advanced gesture control

The wraps are off another innovation to come out of the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and this time Volkswagen if flexing its high-tech muscles. The R Touch interior concept, based on the standard Golf hatchback, previews the next level of advanced infortainment for the firm.

Essentially a snapshot of what we can expect from VW Group cabins in the next half-decade on models such as the MK8 Golf, the R Touch concept debuts an evolution of the firm’s current touchscreen system used for in-car multimedia and information features. There’s also gesture control and the screen itself has expanded to 12.8-inches, with a separate 8-inch Control Centre below for a vast array of functions.

Touchscreens in cars aren’t all that new, of course, but it’s only now that we are seeing interfaces that can live up to our current expectations.

VW built two interesting additional innovations into this car. Hold up your open hand for two seconds and a Kinect like gesture control pops up (including a ghost image of your hand) that lets you control all of the car’s features without even touching a screen. And using VW’s multi-touch sliders, you can put one to three fingers on the screen and, depending on how many fingers you’re using, you can control the radio’s volume or set the ambient light (this looks to be a pretty customizable feature). All of this comes with haptic feedback, too.

As we add more technologies to cars the risk of distractions only increases. In a way, touchscreens are maybe even more likely to be a distraction because you can’t just grip a button blindly. Instead, you pretty much have to at least glance at the screen briefly. It looks like VW is trying to get around this with its multi-touch slider system. How well the gesture control works remains to be seen, though. At first glance, it looks more like a distraction than a safety feature.

Because this is a prototype, the company didn’t reveal when it plans to bring this to production cars or what this system will cost.