As we move towards a future of autonomous vehicles

one problem that automakers and car parts suppliers

are grappling with is what to do

when the car's computer needs the human

to take control again

and how to know what the human is up to.

This is one answer to that.

This is the zForce steering wheel from Autoliv.

And if you can see here around the edge

it's got this series of LED's embedded into the wheel

and as I move the wheel around

or move my hand around the wheel you can see

the blue lights chasing me around.

That's done because there's a whole series

of little infra red sensors all the way around

so the car knows when my hands are on the wheel.

When I'm gripping it I'm in control, the lights are blue.

If I take my hands off the wheel

and autonomous driving is available

in whatever vehicle this would be installed into,

and this is just a concept--

[Car Computer] Auto drive activated.

Then those lights would go green

to show autonomous mode is available

and they can also go other colors, orange, red.

[Car Computer] Warning driver attention required.

[Jack] To try and get the driver's attention

in a much better way than just a little icon.

[Car Computer] Auto drive deactivated.

In front of you in the dash which is pretty easy to miss.

Quite clever though.

Having these means that there's a better

line of communication between the car and the driver

and you can use them in other ways.

For example if I was to get an incoming phones call,

I'm just gonna start that on the demo here.

(phones ringing) And my hands

are on the wheel, instead of blue

under this thumb over here I've got

little green and little red LEDs.

So I can press green to answer the call there

and then red to end it and then we're back to blue

and I'm in control of driving again.

So this is just one solution but it's

an interesting way of looking at how

to start grappling with the problem

of communicating not just what the car's

doing to the driver but what the driver's doing to the car.