Tokyo Auto Salon opens tomorrow and could benefit from much of the hangover from the greatly downsized Tokyo Motor Show last October. One of the most exciting prospects of the show is the first showing of Honda’s Gathers Advance 4, a next-generation car navigation and multimedia system concept which is based around a combination of gesture control (top left image) and voice recognition. Little has been released about the system as yet, however a series of images released by Honda indicates in-car cameras trained on the driver (behind iPod –top right) and voice recognition controls on the steering wheel (bottom right).
The Honda Gathers system is a proprietary Honda audio, multimedia and navigation system already on the market in Japan. The idea of using both voice and gesture recognition to control an entertainment and navigation system makes more sense than any touch-based system, so we’re quite keen to see whetre things lead with this. Stay tuned.