The Homunculus Project Wants To Merge You With Your Car (Video)

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide. Serkan has been the Japan contributor for TechCrunch.com since 2008. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. → Learn More

Thursday, January 20th, 2011


The “intelligent” car is something virtually every automaker is working on at the moment, but that didn’t stop a group of students from Japan’s Tsukuba University from coming up with their own quirky invention: meet the Homunculus, a car that’s “based on a new concept of interactions between humans and vehicles. It promotes and augments non-verbal communicability humans in vehicles.”

The vehicle is actually pretty awesome, as it tries to follows your behavior in three ways. It mimics your

- eye movements (through an in-car eye-tracking system and “robotic eyes” placed in front of the car)

- gestures (through a camera capturing the way you move your hands and and a projector showing a virtual hand on the street)

- “haptic communication” (through IR distance sensors on the outside of the car sending signals to feedback motors attached to your arm)

This video provides more insight (it’s completely in English):

Via Asiajin [ENG]

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