We already have vehicles that can drive themselves, but the thought of handing over control to a car still doesn’t feel natural to most of us. That’s why we created a prototype platform that helps us understand how to make you trust your autonomous or connected car.

Want to see it in action? Check out our video below:

People want and need to know what’s going on in their vehicles, and one way of reinforcing trust and increasing adoption of the latest technology is through the HMI (Human Machine Interface).

That’s where HERE can make a massive difference, and we created a prototype platform to demonstrate how connected and autonomous cars could behave in the future.

As you can see in the video, the simulator uses real data to create a realistic driving environment, introducing different scenarios to demonstrate how we could hand over control to the car itself, and how it could respond in those situations.

Alex Mangan, from the automotive products division of HERE explains: “Drivers won’t accept an experience where the vehicle is constantly reacting to different scenarios, it would be too uncomfortable. When it’s acting on my behalf, it visualises it so the driver knows exactly what’s going on; this is critical to build trust.”

It is also the ideal platform for showing off such technology, letting people hand over the wheel and see why the car is reacting the way it is without worrying about their safety.

In one scenario, the car swerves because it needs to change lanes. A little screen on the steering wheel shows a visualisation of the car moving, so the driver knows the car is changing lanes intentionally.

On the main screen, a video replays the swerve and shows the driver why – there were some boxes falling off a truck and the car moved out of the way. The driver now knows the car was aware of something and understands exactly why it responded. As Alex explains, “HERE wants to get people comfortable with low levels of automation so that when the technology and legislation is ready, and people will already be familiar with what it feels like to hand over control and we can hit the ground with more and more automated functionality”.

What about you? Will you be ready to give up control of your car?