Barring Transformers, cars are not usually thought of as living, however, Lexus has announced a concept car that shows the vehicle as an extension of the driver's body.
The car includes sensors that are able to detect the driver's heartbeat, with heartbeat data being sent to a circuit board that is wired to the car's body panels. Every time the heart beats, the car glows. When the system is off, the car looks as though it has a standard silver color scheme, with no signs of a blue glow.
While the custom RC-F is only a custom car and will not make it to production, it is certainly a neat idea, especially with the rise of wearable tech that is connected to the user's biometrics.
In order to create the effect, the team at Lexus Australia used paint made by Ohio-based company Lumilor, which is able to light up with an electrical current.
The aim of the project itself was to "bring the thrill of driving the Lexus RC-F to life," essentially showing the speeding and slowing of a heartbeat as the car through a racetrack.
"From fitbits to Apple Watches it's evident that we're hooked on personal stats," said Ben Cooper, Group Innovations Director at Tricky Jigsaw, a partner of Lexus Australia in the creation of the car, in an interview with Wired. "A car that can understand the driver's biometric outputs provides all manner of possibility. Imagine mapping biometric with telemetric data to understand what stresses the driver. Could your car temper road rage or recognize tiredness? Perhaps other data such as weather and traffic could also lead us to understand optimal times to drive?"
The car is certainly very visually stunning, and one that could signal future car tech, in which our car can, as Cooper mentioned, detect things like tiredness and stress. Of course, bringing that data to the exterior of the car could be a pretty big distraction for other drivers on the road, however, for internal use, the data could be hugely helpful. Lexus will reveal more about its HeartRacing project on July 24.
Of course, being able to detect if a driver is tired may not even be an issue in the distant future, when cars will be driving us around on their own. While at the beginning, autonomous cars will require alert drivers to be ready to take the wheel, it is not difficult to imagine a future in which users can tell their car where to go and take a nap on the way.
Check out a video of the car below.
