Cars That Show Emotion

from the KITT-would-jealous dept

Mon, Jul 26th 2004 2:08am — Michael Ho

Anthropomorphic cars usually only exist in TV shows like Knight Rider or 'Herbie Goes ______' movies. Though drivers can express their feelings with after-market car accessories (or various hand signals to indicate their true feelings), real cars have not been able to express themselves -- until now. With US 6,757,593, inventors at Toyota have claimed the rights to cars that can show a variety of different emotions by wagging antennas, crying tears, raising eyebrows, etc. The car itself determines what emotions to show using software that records some user input along with road conditions and driving behavior. While this all sounds cute and amusing, I'm not sure I'd want my car to be showing a guilty smile the next time I'm caught speeding.

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5 Comments

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Roland Piquepaille, 26 Jul 2004 @ 2:41am

Patent number
The New York Times doesn't give the correct number.
The name of the patent is "Vehicle expression operation control system, vehicle communication system, and vehicle which performs expression operation" and its number is 6,757,593.
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Mike (profile), 26 Jul 2004 @ 3:14am

Re: Patent number
Thanks. I fixed the link.
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Help Desk Software, 26 Jul 2004 @ 4:49am

No Subject Given
What next? Cars that have guided missles? Oh wait they already have those...hmmm..
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weebletron, 25 Jul 2006 @ 2:06pm

These sound nice
Actually I think it would be kinda cool to have a car that imatates feelings. Has anyone heard of the toyota pod?
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executive car services, 23 Apr 2010 @ 3:39am

Waste of time
I do not see how a car with emotions is going to benefit anyone it is just a gimmic. Money would be better spent designing cars which are green for the economy or automatic drive which would prevent accidents.
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