Rinspeed Senso - an intelligent and sensitive concept car

December 22, 2004 Cars that monitor the driver's key biometric indicators so they can respond accordingly are on the horizon. Innovative Swiss automobile design studio Rinspeed has collaborated with plastics giant Bayer MaterialScience to produce a vision of the next generation of cars with the "Senso" concept car. Few details have been released at this stage as the car is being readied for the European 2005 auto show circuit, but the idea behind the car is that it will sense and adapt to the driver's mood. The car apparently uses a combination of biometric and other information to assess the driver's mindset, then assists the driver to reach an optimum state of mind by altering ambient light, and "feel, smell and sound."

Rinspeed is one of Gizmag's favourite designers - the company never fails to come up with an exciting and radically different concept car for each major European auto show, and unlike many other concept vehicles shown at such shows, the Rinspeed concepts are always full working prototypes - quite a feat considering the company has but a fraction of the resources of the global automotive producers.

Some of the Rinspeed concepts of recent years (all previously featured in Gizmag) include:

The Presto - an innovative car designed to help solve Europe's parking problems by changing its length from a four-seater to a compact two-seater roadster at the push of a button.

The Bedouin - an off-road collapsible car based on the Porsche 996 turbo, the Bedouin is the latest concept from Rinspeed Design, the Swiss company that introduced the Presto collapsible concept car in 2002. The all-wheel-drive Bedouin can automatically be transformed from a two-seater pick-up into a four-seater sports wagon in less than 10 seconds.

The Splash - the outrageous amphibious sportscar that was this car's direct predecessor and one of the quartet of amphibious vehicles shown or released in 2004. Though the Gibbs Aquada reaped the lion's share of the publicity thanks to rapacious Richard Branson's crossing of the English Channel, the Rinspeed Splash Amphibious Hydrofoil Sportscar had the performance edge being capable of 80 kmh (approx. 45 knots) on the water and 200 kmh on land. 007, eat yer heart out!

Rinspeed's lateral thinking and ability to meld emerging technologies into a string of of absolute leading edge automobiles is building a global respect that belies the company's size. The other and somewhat more significant automotive manufacturer playing in this space is none other than Toyota.

The world's second largest automotive manufacturer recently patented a system that enables a vehicle to recognise its surroundings, the actions of other road users and the emotional response of its driver and convey the driver's emotions to the public via a vehicle expression system on the exterior of the vehicle.

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