Earlier this week BMW unveiled its Natural Interaction system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The new system is aimed at simplifying the way you interact with your car, making everything as seamless as possible. The main goal of this project from BMW was to create a way to interact with the car that replicates human interaction and that’s no easy feat. While the audience over in Barcelona got to experience things first hand, we’ll have to rely on the video below to get a glimpse into how it all works.

The new system combines the most advanced voice command technology available with expanded gesture control and gaze recognition to enable genuine multimodal operation for the first time. The first BMW Natural Interaction functions will be available in the BMW iNEXT from 2021 and if the video below is anything to go by, things are definitely shaping up to be quite incredible. Combining different technologies required an algorithm that will presumably combine and interpret your own style to adapt to it.

The way the driver interacts with the car can vary a lot depending on the situation as well. For example, when the driver is engaged in conversation, they would probably choose gesture and gaze control; when their eyes are on the road, better to rely on speech and gestures. In this way, for example, car windows or the sunroof can be opened or closed, air vents adjusted or a selection made on the Control Display. If the driver wants to learn more about vehicle functions, they can also point to buttons and ask what they do.

“Customers should be able to communicate with their intelligent connected vehicle in a totally natural way,” explains Christoph Grote, Senior Vice President, BMW Group Electronics. “People shouldn’t have to think about which operating strategy to use to get what they want. They should always be able to decide freely – and the car should still understand them. BMW Natural Interaction is also an important step for the future of autonomous vehicles, when interior concepts will no longer be geared solely towards the driver’s position and occupants will have more freedom.”