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Today you'll find it on a video game, but soon you could be driving a car with a joystick. Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker showed off a couple of concept vehicles on Wednesday that do away with the traditional steering wheel.
The FT-EV II which has got its world premiere at the Tokyo Motor Show is a compact electric vehicle designed for short trips. The car retains seats for four passengers despite being much more compact than most of the cars, Apex drive by VIA technology so that it can be controlled with a pair of joysticks.
The car steering, braking, and acceleration can be controlled by hand. So foot pedals aren't freeing up a bit more leg room. The i-Real a second concept that has been shown before also utilizes two joysticks. It's a single person transport, but it looks like a futuristic chair on wheels and the joysticks are at the end of each armrest.
The joystick control system in the i-Real was developed by component maker Tokai Rika which were showing it and two other prototype control systems on its booth at the motor show.
Like the i-Real system the prototypes have no pedals. One employed as simple joystick left and right movement of the stick steer the vehicle. In this case, a digital car on a driving simulator screen while acceleration and braking was accomplished by pushing it forwards and pulling it back.
Another prototype looks like a pilot's yoke on aircraft. It has a couple of controls on the inside of a each of the grips that can be operated by a thumb to control the acceleration and breaking.
But perhaps the most advanced control system of all was on Honda's U3X mobility device. Riders control the device by simply leaning in the direction they wish to move. An Incline Detector inside the device sense she is shifting upper body weight in response by moving forwards, backwards, or sideways or turning.
At the Tokyo Motor Show 2009 this is Martin Williams, IDG news service.
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