James C. Liu

The E-Class full-size sedan is considered a large car in Europe and often runs into narrow parking conditions. With Remote Park Pilot, users can select a desired parking spot while inside the car, step outside, and complete the parking maneuver from outside the vehicle. Upon returning to the vehicle, Remote Park Pilot can start up the engine and reverse the maneuver. 

Role: Design Manager
Launch: May 2016
Contribution: Interaction Concept, Dead-man Switch
 

The Deadman switch

The greatest fear of a Mercedes-Benz product manager is an autonomous car running over it's owner. With this in mind, Remote Park Pilot is a deceptively simple application. The main innovation was in creating a dead-man switch complicated enough to require user intent, yet simple enough to operate blindly in order to keep the user's eyes on the autonomous car. We utilized a simple, but highly tuned circular gesture as the dead-man switch. Building on this affordance, engine startup was also implemented using the circle gesture.