BMW Touts Gesture-Control Touchscreen and Floating HUD

BMW AG is developing an integrated dashboard interface that teams a gesture-control touchscreen with a hologram-like head-up display.

The carmaker will unveil the concept system, which it calls HoloActive Touch, next month at CES in Las Vegas. The company didn’t say if or when it would offer the system in a production vehicle.

Like the AirTouch concept that BMW showed at CES last January, the HoloActive system allows users to operate the display via finger gestures—without any physical contact—near a “virtual touchscreen.” A camera detects the driver’s hand movements and fingertip positions. Commands are confirmed by what BMW describes as perceived tactile feedback.

The full-color display is generated by the “clever use” of reflections rather than traditional HUD windshield projections to generate a free-floating image, according to BMW. The company provided no further details.