Acura’s Innovative Infotainment Control

Technology trends in vehicles are fairly easy to follow these days; did your competitor build something unique? Did they make sure to copyright the technology? Is it popular with the audience? Can you build your own version that’s better? It’s a rare moment when the design of car technology is a truly unique design, and that holds true for the infotainment systems present in most vehicles today. BMW, MINI, Mercedes, Ford, Lamborghini, etc. all make use of touchscreen technology throughout their infotainment system, and other controls that mimic smartphones: But it makes sense, with almost all modern-day people using smart phones every sing day. Build a technology that mimics another to make the interface as easy and intuitive as possible.

Yet, Acura has chosen a completely different design, that I would daresay is not only more intuitive than touchscreen systems, but also much safer to use while driving. Available in the 2019/2020 Acura RDX, the touchpad interface has been deemed absolute cursor positioning, and it’s a true step towards modernization built for the vehicle instead of copying someone else.

So what about this ‘absolute cursor positioning’ touchpad makes it so unique? Well, instead of dragging a cursor around as you may have done on your laptop pad, struggling to land the cursor in just the right spot and accidently clicking somewhere you didn’t want to go, the absolute cursor positioning works almost like a map of the screen. Say you need to click a button in the top left of your screen; click the touchpad in the upper left, and voila, you’ve clicked the button. Everything on the screen is directly mapped to the cursors interface, and correlates directly from the touchpad to the screen, and means no more losing your cursor, or accidently swiping past what you wanted to click.

Acura has taken this a step further, with a split screen setup on the infotainment system, and a split touchpad created with similar ratios, to make navigating between the informational split as simple as possible. When Acura’s principal user interface engineer, Ross Miller, was working on developing this system, he and his team didn’t talk to people about just car designs and interfaces, but also dishwashers, TVs, phones, and so many other household, utility items. And by going the extra mile to expand on the development of their infotainment system, they’ve created an interface that is suited so much more for driving.

Even better, because this system doesn’t rely on drivers navigating by looking for the button and reaching for the touchscreen, but instead by memorizing button locations, they keep their eyes on the road more, and don’t have to stress about getting the climate right or switching radio channels. Better road focus means better drivers means safer roads, all through Acura developing the new absolute cursor positioning interface.