First View: Back Seat Video for Self-Driving Car

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Ford patent autonomous entertainment

If cars go autonomous, what happens to the entertainment systems? Ford is giving us a glimpse of that with a patent it won this month for an “autonomous vehicle entertainment system.”

In a word, it envisions a movie theater in a car with a projector that mounts to the ceiling of the car and a screen that retracts into the ceiling.

When the car is in autonomous mode, a screen comes down from the ceiling in front of the windshield.

A smart controller would know when the car is in autonomous mode and when the driver has assumed control of the car. The entertainment system would switch accordingly, with the screen retracting when the driver took over and video being sent to smaller screens located in the dashboard, an instrument cluster or a rearview mirror.

You can see the patent here.

Source: Forbes

Photo: Forbes

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