Ford technology could recognise your face

Does your car know who’s driving it? It may do in the future – as Ford is working on technology that can recognise your face.

The carmaker has teamed up with technology experts Intel to use sensors inside the car that can identify individual people, and adapt settings to that driver’s preferences.

It can open their favourite music playlists, while showing them their plans for the day and list their phone contacts.

If the face recognition software (named Mobii) doesn’t recognise the driver, it’ll take a picture and send it to the owner of the vehicle.

The owner can then give permission for this person to drive, or set limits. So, for example, they can limit the speed, set a maximum volume for the radio, and prevent them from using the in-car phone system. It’s basically a development of Ford’s SYNC (pictured above) and MyKey systems.

But that’s not all Mobii can do. It can detect gestures to change the temperature, or open the sunroof.

With sensors and cameras monitoring the outside of the car, why not introduce them to the interior?

CTO and VP at Ford Research and Innovation, Paul Mascarenas:

“Our goal with the Mobii research is to explore how drivers interact with technology in the car and how we can then make that interaction more intuitive and predictive.

“The use of interior imaging is purely research at this point; however, the insights we’ve gained will help us shape the customer experience in the long term.”

Using a mobile phone app, the car’s owner will even be able to operate the in-car cameras to look around the interior. So, you can find out if anyone’s in it who shouldn’t be, and find out if you’ve left anything in it.

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By motoringresearch.com