What you’re looking at is a one-of-a-kind minicar for children that was designed by the same people who designed the also-wonderful 45 concept from last year. It is the best thing I’ve ever seen.
The minicar is intended to ease the anxiety of children as they move from hospital beds at SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital in Spain to treatment rooms. Hyundai made it as an experiment, basically, to test technology that tries to judge the mood of the rider and adjust the environment correspondingly.
Here’s Hyundai’s description of that tech:
The Facial Emotion Recognition System uses a camera in front of the seat to identify the child’s emotions in real-time. The Breathing Exercise Belt wraps around the body and its air pockets apply gentle pressure to help relieve anxiety and enable more stable breathing, while the accelerometer, the Heart Rate Monitoring Sensor, measures the heart rate and breathing rate.
The Emotion Adaptive Lighting displays green, yellow or red to show the child’s emotional state in colors. The Emotion Adaptive Scent Dispenser sprays fragrance timed with breathing to help put a smile on the faces of the young patients. The vehicle also blows bubbles to celebrate the child’s progress toward treatment.
And let’s get into a bit how this works, via a chart from Hyundai.
Hyundai also produced a charming video:
Do you want some specs? I know you want some specs. Power is rated at 240 watts, which is about one percent of the power of a single motor on a Tesla Model 3 Performance. Is that enough? Hell yeah, that’s enough.
I’m probably the fourth kid in these photos, the one who just can’t conceal her smile. Tag yourself!
