BMW’s gesture control wasn’t a hit when it debuted back in 2015. Press either ignored it entirely, couldn’t operate it, or found it to be redundant. Worse still: as recently as this year, some well-respected outlets have even reduced it to “a gimmick”. Tragically, it seems BMW may have been listening. Gesture control has been dropping off models as of late – see the most recent 4 and 5 Series packaging. And while the root cause is potentially supply chain related, I’m not optimistic. This is dire, because BMW’s head might just have been in the right place when they started pursuing gesture control. Sadly, however, they were not in the right time.
Gesture control debuted in 2015, when touchscreens were just starting to really enter the mainstream. Consumers were – and still are – dead set on believing that the touch screen is the future. Even critical audiences weren’t often discussing the potential dangers of the touch screen yet. Today, tech-critical audiences endlessly rally against the widespread adoption of touchscreens in the automotive space. And there’s no shortage of good reasons.
Gesture-controlled systems have their roots as early as 1980. Most early systems depended on a combination of both voice and gesture and demanded the use of a wrist sensor. As technology progressed into the 1990s and early 2000s, incremental changes most extended to using different outside devices. Gloves, a pendant, and even fingertip devices are all examples of the baby steps gesture control took up until the 2010s. More familiar may be devices like the Nintendo Wii or Xbox Kinect.
Fast forward to 2015, where BMW implements a camera-based system into their newest 7 Series. Though camera-based systems had been done before, this was the first time it had been integrated into something as pedestrian as a car – and the first time it had been implemented at such an approachable scale. Gesture control in the 7 Series also laid the groundwork for what BMW dubbed “natural interaction” – a promise of vehicle interface comprised of gestures, looks, and voice commands.
