Harman Steering Wheel

Innovating with a one-of-a-kind haptic steering wheel.

Expertise

Most Modern vehicles provide feedback audibly and visually. However, those senses can quickly become overstimulated leading to distracted driving. The National Safety Council reports that this results in around 16,000 accidents each year. To tackle this issue, the Harman has made it their mission to minimize distractions for drivers and reduce cognitive load so that they can concentrate better on driving. They had created benchtop prototypes of their haptic and shape shifting technologies and needed our help to create ergonomic and stylistically appropriate designs for high end automotive environments.

The Challenge

Advanced robotics and haptics were combined and integrated into a steering wheel. It communicates directions to the driver through touch. As a turn approaches, the wheel will swell on the corresponding side of your hand, with its thickness indicating how steep the upcoming turn will be.  When it’s time to make the turn – the wheel will pulse. It can also indicate the steepness of upcoming turns, provide merger and blind spot alerts, countdown to turns, frontal collision alerts, pedestrian alerts, and hidden object alerts. 

Our Solution

We created a demonstration model that mimics the functionality and feel of the finished product and showcased it at CES by installing it in a BMW X5. Our team flew to Las Vegas to set up the demo device for the conference.

The Impact

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