Rinspeed's Senso: the car that senses the driver

Automotive innovator Rinspeed has done it again. Each year Rinspeed releases one or more prototypes that push the edge of the automotive design envelope. This year, the company delved into the future again, with a car that senses the driver and reacts accordingly. The "Senso" actually "senses" the driver by measuring his (or her) biometric data, and then exerts a positive effect on him with the help of patterns, colors, music and fragrances. A person who is relaxed and wide-awake simply drives better and more safely.

"The driver and not the technology should be the focal point of a car," observes the head of Rinspeed, Frank M. Rinderknecht (49), summing up the fundamental idea behind his latest concept car offering: the "Senso".

Due to be presented jointly by the famous Swiss automotive design and solutions specialist, Rinspeed, and Bayer MaterialScience, one of the world's largest plastics producers, at the Geneva Motor Show from March 3-13, 2005, the innovative "Senso" was developed in cooperation with the experienced engineering specialist, Esoro.

Johannes Seesing (51), who specializes in automotive applications at Bayer, says: "Together with our partners in the automotive industry, we are already carrying out research on the car of tomorrow. The "Senso" is an outstanding example of unconventional ideas and applied lateral thinking."

The "Senso", which runs on environmentally friendly natural gas, has, not without reason, been labeled the most sensuous car in the world. The "Senso" actually "senses" the driver by measuring his (or her) biometric data, and then exerts a positive effect on him with the help of patterns, colors, music and fragrances. A person who is relaxed and wide-awake simply drives better and more safely.

The whole project is based on an elaborate sensory system that forms the heart of the vehicle. It consists of a number of sensors that have the job of gathering data about the driver's condition. Firstly, there is a biometric Polar watch to measure the driver's pulse.

A "Mobile Eye" camera records his driving behavior, in other words how well and how often he changes lane, and how close and at what speed he approaches the cars in front. Then - this, at any rate, is the vision - a HP board computer evaluates the data and establishes, with the aid of special algorithms, the driver's current state of mind.

The developers of the concept car speak, not surprisingly, of "Zen-sorial" - with reference to Far Eastern meditation. On the basis of the measured data, the driver now receives various impulses to his senses that put him in a state of relaxed attentiveness.

The idea of 'communicating surfaces' stems from Andreas Fischer, a designer who developed the "zenMotion concept" at the Institute for Computer Sciences at the University of Zurich in close cooperation with the Institute for Psychology at the University of Innsbruck.

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