There’s a lot you expect your car to do. The top priority is that it gets you where you need to go and does that safely, but there are certain luxuries most every car owner wants. Music, air conditioning, and comfortable seats are just a few items on the list. As car technology changes, so does our list of expectations and preferences. Something you might not even consider, though, is having a car that can read your emotions. According to Nerdist, Honda and SoftBank are trying to make a car that does that.
Honda wants cars to read your emotions and talk to you.
Here’s what Honda and SoftBank have in the works: They want to build a car that can not only read its driver’s emotions but even talk to them. The point is to make road trips more entertaining (or at least less mind-numbing). This feature could come in handy during an everyday work commute or even a special-occasion road trip. In a sense, Honda and SoftBank want to make a car that’s more human.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son told Fortune, “Imagine if robots, with their super intelligence, devoted themselves to humans. And imagine that cars themselves became supercomputers or robots one day. Honda will be the first to adopt this technology.”
Your relationship with your car could become even closer, making the idea of your auto baby being your “best friend” far less of an exaggeration.
Honda and SoftBank are both well-known for their work in the field of humanoid robotics. Honda has ASIMO and SoftBank has Pepper. So the partnership between the two companies isn’t a huge surprise, even if the project itself is kind of startling.
Nerdist writes, “…this scenario absolutely sounds like the start of a post-apocalyptic future in which humans are no longer the dominant entity on this planet.”
“Robots can already kill starfish, and we’ve mistreated the hitchhiking ones so badly that they’re trying to escape from our control, so perhaps we pump the brakes on this idea for now,” adds Nerdist.
Let’s see what progress Honda and SoftBank make with this technology!
(H/T Nerdist.)
