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34 The PCB Magazine • September 2015 Gesture is the New Touch While touchscreens are still one of the best ways to access a number of features in a vehicle, screens take the driver's eyes off the road. Many in the industry believe that gesture control is a solution to that problem. BMW's next-gener- ation iDrive interface has sensors mounted in the headliner that detect movements near the infotainment system and respond to specific commands. Want to raise the volume? Twirl a finger clockwise. Need to answer a call? Point at the screen to accept. Need directions home? Point two fingers at the screen. The Volkswagen Golf R Touch concept eliminates all buttons in- side the vehicle and instead relies on multiple touchscreens with haptic feedback. Autonomous Automobiles We were all sufficiently wowed a few years ago when automakers introduced a few self- parking cars. Well, the bar has been raised when earlier this year Audi's A7 Piloted Driving Con- cept car made a road trip from Palo Alto, Cali- fornia, to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The car drove on its own for more than 550 miles and could initiate lane changes and passing maneuvers. There was, of course, a human in the driver seat, ready to take the wheel at a mo- ment's notice. Audi has seamlessly integrated the autonomous-driving technology into the vehicle so there is no radar array or cameras protruding from the grill or roof. Think of the electronic computing power such a feat takes and the enormous amount of data and calculations that would quickly over- whelm a traditional vehicle's computer. So Audi turned to Nvidia, a computer GPU chip manu- facturer. Nvidia created the Tegra X1 superchip, which allows a car to teach itself with a training algorithm that identifies different types of ve- COMPuTER ON WHEELS continues figure 2: audi's self-piloted car. thE rIght ApproACh