Your car can feel like a furnace when you first get in on a hot day. Often, the first thing we do is put the air conditioner on full blast and point as many of the nozzles as possible directly at our face and body. Newer cars with climate control will generally automate the latter job of cranking up the cold, but directing the vents is traditionally left to the occupants of the vehicle. One of Ford’s latest patents could change all that, however.
The Michigan automaker has been busy over the last few years, patenting everything from in-car sanitizer bottles to in-car sanitizer lamps. However, not every idea the company has is reflective of a tortured post-pandemic society. Ford has also come up with a nifty “Vehicle Air Vent System” and secured a patent for the concept. It’s a nice feature in which the HVAC system will direct the flow from its vents directly towards a given target, such as an overheating driver or passenger in need of thermal relief.
The concept would sound fantastical just 15 years ago, but today, it’s something any moderately experienced maker could build with off-the-shelf parts. The key to the system is a camera built into the dashboard. This camera captures vision of the driver, and using simple face-detection algorithms, can figure out their position in the vehicle. Armed with this information, the vehicle can then adjust the up-down angle and left-right angle of the HVAC vents to direct air directly at the driver.
On the surface, it sounds kind of frivolous. How hard is it to adjust the vents yourself? And yet, in some cases, it’s easy to imagine the utility of such a system. In some larger trucks, for example, you might find yourself sitting a ways back from the vents. You can lean forward to adjust them, sure. However, this often involves trial and error as you try and get them positioned right to direct air towards your position when you’re sitting normally. Simply having the vents aim at you automatically is much easier by comparison, and kind of luxurious.
It’s the kind of feature you’d expect to see in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class or a Rolls-Royce. Indeed, you can get digitally-controlled vents as part of the Thermotronic system on the latest Mercedes E-Class, but it’s not the same thing. The vent positions can be controlled via the infotainment touchscreen, with selections for the head, upper body, or to aim away from the passenger and driver. However, there doesn’t appear to be any intelligent sensing going on to get the aim right. The vent positions are just simple presets.
The optional THERMOTRONIC with Digital Vent Control in the new #MercedesBenz #EClass can adjust the air vents in the dashboard automatically. It also saves and remembers your individual settings in the user profile.
Learn more: https://t.co/3VoSsZYG8e pic.twitter.com/dlAbJ27SND— Mercedes-Benz (@MercedesBenz) February 24, 2023
Implementing this feature is actually very easy with today’s technology. First, you need a set of vents that can be moved on command. This is trivial for automakers, who mastered electric windows and power mirrors years ago. It simply involves adding some servos or motors to existing air vent designs. Beyond that, you just need an imaging system that can track humans in a video feed. This is easy, with face and body detection a problem that was solved long ago in the computer vision space.
Indeed, you could realistically build such a system into your own car if you’re handy enough. I’d start with a Raspberry Pi, which is a kind of credit-card sized computer. Hook it up with a camera with a fish-eye lens placed far back on the dashboard, and it should be able to see the driver and passenger perfectly well. Have it run a face-detection algorithm using the freely-available OpenCV library, so it can determine the positions of the driver and passenger. Then, you just need to calibrate a map correlating vent positions to the positions of the driver and passenger in the video feed. If you wanted to win a Nobel Prize for your work, you could also read the position of the seat rails. This would allow you to better account for the driver and passenger sitting closer or further back from the dash, and aim the vents accordingly.
Realistically, the hardest part would be modifying your vents to be controllable by the Raspberry Pi. I’d probably use some tiny servos to control stock vents, or maybe just 3D print some new vents from scratch. Ultimately, you’re just building a robotic sentry turret, but instead of shooting people with bullets, it’s blasting them with air.
We could also see the technology being used for mischief, too. Mount a windscreen washer nozzle on the vents, and have them track the passenger as normal. Then you can squirt them in the face at will. Probably not good for maintaining a friendship, but perhaps a useful bargaining tool if your pals aren’t coughing up for gas money on the long drive home from The Autopian meetup.
For now, it’s just a patent. There’s no word on whether Ford plans to bring the tech to market on any vehicles in particular. It’d make a pretty fun demo for dealers doing a sales pitch, though, and we’d love to play with them too. Maybe they could call them Terminator Vents because it’s a die-hard robot that won’t stop until it finds the human its looking for? In any case, here’s hoping Ford makes these a reality sometime soon.
Image credits: Ford, US Patent and Trademark Office
My mother would HATE this. She does not like the feeling of the air on her face.
I work on British buses that occasionally will shoot shards of broken glass out of the hvac vents onto paying passengers.
My company would jump at the opportunity to integrate or even retrofit this technology into our fleet.
Right. With the AI revolution, what I want is precisely a car with facial recognition software built in from the factory!
OTOH, theft-prevention deterrents could definitely rise to new levels with this technology….
It’s already here with attention monitors.
Ah, Christ on a Pogo stick, you’re right.
FML, I’m old
My mechanical vents stopped working years ago and they expect electric vents to last?
I actually prefer the air straight at my face…maybe since I’m usually wearing sunglasses…I can understand if you wear contacts it would be annoying…either way this is a stupid idea
If I want wind in my face, I’ll flip open my vent windows, TYVM.
Now, HVAC that detects and responds to an occupant’s hot flashes …
“Has this ever happened to you?”
Cue a terrible actor straining awkwardly to reach and adjust their air vents.
Actor knocks a huge big gulp out of the cup holder into an open briefcase on the passenger seat.
Car starts to veer into oncoming traffic.
Actor overreacts and yanks the steering wheel the other way.
Car careens off the road into a lake.
Cue over acted facepalm.
As a contact lens wearer, this sounds horrible
Agreed, I don’t need contacts anymore but nothing dries my eyes out quicker than a blast of constant air hitting my them. If this feature ever does hit the market, I’m buying stock in an eye drop maker stat
Bingo. I absolutely hate having vents blow on my face and dry out my contacts. Even when I’m wearing my glasses I hate it.
This is my idea of hell. I hate A/C in the first place and almost never use it. I LOVE getting into a hot car when it’s like 120+ in there, that is my idea of comfortable. I’m the lunatic driving around with my windows down when it’s 105 on a July afternoon. Additionally, pointing vents at my face is to be avoided, it makes my contact lenses feel crispy.
I prefer crank windows so I imagine you can guess what my opinion is.
Crank windows are fine but I’m not inflexible on this point. Manually sliding windows, removable windows, and the absence of windows are also perfectly acceptable alternatives.
What about Citroen flip-up windows?
I used to flip up my 2CV windows with punches. A little one on the release clip, then a bigger one to flip it all the way up to vertical and in the the catch at the top of the door.
More technology needs to respond to punches.
Is there any other way?
Excellent point. I made that list by running through what I’ve got in terms of main windows for the driver’s position (therefore not counting vent windows) but flip-up windows certainly look like they should be quite good as well. I’ve never been in a position to try them, though.
Hard no. I would want it to be turn-off-able. And yet more crap to break when us poors can afford the cars this will be in as used cars.
Like many others, I don’t need it tracking me to aim the air in my eyes. However, I think electromechanically actuated HVAC vents would be useful if they were tied to the memory seat function. Mirrors, too. There’s almost a foot of height difference between me and my wife, so when we’re switching cars, it would be genuinely convenient if pressing one memory profile button adjusted all the ergonomic parameters at once.
Much rather have it aim at hands, but baby steps, right?
Seeing how AI treats hands I wouldn’t trust it to be accurate
While we’re on the HVAC topic can someone explain why there’s always an option for defroster and feet but not defroster and upper body? Absolutely flumoxed as to why I’m not allowed to warm my hands and windshield at the same time
That is a perfect and excellent question. I went wild with joy when, in Iceland, the Kia Sportage, I rented had dash and defrost as an HVAC choice. It was late march and early apirl so is was cold. I loved having that choice and since have wondered why not more cars have that option.
Both of my Volvo’s have that option.
That’s nice.
Wake me when they bring back the crotch cooler.
Came here for this… not disappointed
agreed
Word. I miss all the 80s GM vehicles I drove that had that feature. My 1987 Suburban would sometimes get stuck adjusting between vent zones and send all the air through those lower vents. On really nasty, hot Houston days, it was glorious.
Just here to add on to the chorus of “Who on earth wants the vents pointed in their damn face?”
Going against the grain here, I do enjoy the vents blowing directly at my head, but also aiming them myself and never touching them again isn’t that hard.
I was gonna say, face is the last spot I want it… Seems I’ve been beat.
I aim the dash vents at my face (just below my eyes so it isn’t torture) on the first day I buy a car. Then I used the internationally recognised apex of HVAC controls (one of the three round dials) to turn those vents on if I need them.
This patent is clearly not for HVAC, it’s someone at Ford trying to get headhunted by an arms manufacturer for auto-aiming for headshots.
Sorry, this is just dumb. This is just another system that will rely on components you either won’t be able to repair yourself or even get from Ford in 5 years time. And I’m sure adding complexity will make vehicles more affordable for the average person? Right!?
It’s a patent, not a feature they’re building.
Yuck. I hate everything about this, including the presumption that I want it aimed at my face to dry out my eyes when, if I’m getting in the car from the outside, it’s more likely I have other area cooling priorities. I’m not even sure of the point, anyway, with so many cars having remote start that would likely be used to pre-cool the whole cabin by such dainty types for whom this system seems to be designed. I would imagine working against the motors would make aiming them manually—simply and quickly—more difficult as well as giving Ford ample opportunity to make something foolproof another potential reliability and expensive repair issue. I have yet to find an automated device of any kind that consistently—or ever—makes the choice I want it to make. If they want to do something useful, they can bring back crotch vents.
There’s a joke in there about ‘blowing’ and ‘crotches’, but I’m too lazy to pull it off.
Ahem…
I specifically turn my vents so they’re not pointed directly at my face. I do keep one pointed directly at my aluminum shifter handle in the summer, however.
I’m probably in the minority but I cannot stand vents blowing in my face.
Bet I could screw this system up by putting a photo of my face in my lap and letting the system burn itself out trying to decide which face to aim at.