Mercedes-Benz previews interior of autonomous concept car

Mercedes-Benz has revealed a contemporary new interior design that will grace an autonomous mobility concept car to be revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

Developed at the manufacturer's Sunnyvale research and development centre in California, the interior has been conceived to showcase the design and engineering freedoms made possible autonomous driving technology and the latest developments in gesture, touch and eye detection control (as pictured below).

The multi-faceted four-seat concept interior provides seating on a quartet of high backed lounge-style seats that rotate to allow a face-to-face configuration in what Mercedes-Benz design boss, Gorden Wagener, describes as a “digital living space”.

Mercedes-Benz has designed its new interior to allow occupants to interact with the vehicle by means of hand gestures, touch displays and eye sensor detection. The vehicle's surroundings, whether pedestrians, other road users or the local buildings, are also brought into the interior and portrayed as fluid all-round information on displays.

Mercedes says that autonomous driving technology will build on an extensive suit of sensors, including a stereo camera and long- and short-range radar.

On the S500 Intelligent Drive concept, information from the camera and the sensor system are superimposed and “fused to provide a picture of static and dynamic objects around the car”. By static objects, Mercedes means the infrastructure such as signs and traffic lights, and by dynamic objects it means other road users.

The S500 concept scans its surroundings within a range of as much as 650 feet, 25 times per second, and can not only pin-point the locations of these objects but can also measure the speeds of the ‘dynamic’ objects.

Mercedes said: "Autonomous vehicles will become commonplace and socially accepted in the cities of the future.

"With the new luxury-class interior concept, the car of the future will become… a variable and private area of retreat in increasingly dense urban traffic. By virtue of this new form of travel, the occupants of autonomous vehicles will have the freedom to put their time spent travelling to even more varied use.”