Four inventors working for Toyota in Japan have filed a patent for a car that can express all sorts of emotions: cry, laugh, wink, anything. It can, for example, express its anger at another car cutting into traffic by crouching low on its wheels and beaming out red headlights like an offended lion.
The car they envision also has an antenna that wags, an adjustable body height, headlights that vary in intensity and hood slits and ornamentation designed to look like eyebrows, eyelids and tears. These components of the car can glow with coloured lights to simulate moods and physical features. It comes with a computer system that detects road and vehicle conditions (like steering angle, braking and speed) and combine the driver’s input about his/her mood to express a certain emotion.
What will we have next? A whining aeroplane? A sulking train?
Read: Patents: An Automobile With Feelings [The New York Times]
The Laughing Car
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