2012-01-17

Mercedes-Benz DICE Dynamic & Intuitive Control Experience

Digital Premium through Augmented Reality

With the DICE (Dynamic & Intuitive Control Experience) sculpture, at the CES Mercedes-Benz provides a vision of the interactive, intuitive and simultaneously safe operating experience in premium automobiles of the future. DICE impressively demonstrates how the vehicle becomes an intelligent mobility partner through bidirectional interaction.

"The intelligent car communicates not only with the driver, but also with other transportation modes and its entire environment in order to be able to assess all relevant information for a trip and make practical use of it immediately," says Zetsche.


Mercedes-Benz Unveils Futuristic Dashboard Controlled By Hand Gestures @PSFK



Damon Lavrinc from Auto Blog tested DICE and claims that although it’s an innovative solution, “it’s not without its issues.” Lavrinc pointed out that the system the proximity sensors can’t yet distinguish between a gesture or if you just have your hand out. A Mercedes executive stated that we won’t be seeing gesture-based dashboard in Mercedes vehicles any time soon as a production version won’t be released for another 20 years.

Watch the video below to see Lavrinc testing out the Mercedes DICE system.



Mercedes-Benz DICE concept shows the future of augmented reality in cars


The complete windshield becomes a brilliant head-up display; the dashboard, a display band. Digital information about the actual vehicle surroundings, points of interest, friends, pedestrians and other vehicles is presented there and a natural interaction by means of gestures is made possible.

For this Mercedes-Benz uses a combination of Augmented Reality and natural gesture control to realize a completely new, exciting form of communication between people and their environment.

The interactive logic of the novel control concept is very imitative of intuitive human behavior. Along with functional aspects it now also involves emotional and social aspects and so creates a unique operating and driving experience.


To the left of the steering wheel on the flat panel dashboard was a simulated compass that we could manipulate with hand gestures, similar to Microsoft’s Kinect system. To right of the steering wheel, on the passenger side dashboard, was a secondary panel with buttons label Social, Media and Places. Waving our hands in front of each of the tabs would highlight them, while pushing our hands forward allowed us to select them.

As our virtual vehicle navigated the streets of San Francisco, DICE would pick up on various landmarks and display selectable points of interest icons on the windshield. Waving our hands in front of the icons brought up information on their corresponding points of interest that we could choose to save to our dashboard’s Places section.